Thursday, June 10, 2010

The world cup

Back in March one of our church leaders went to South Africa for the Street Child World Cup. Street children from eight countries played football, received coaching, and were helped by artists to create artwork that told their stories. As well as lots of fun things they discussed the difficulties they encountered and talked about practical solutions.

As the world cup is about to kick off in South Africa, it's timely to remember the plight of the street kids. It was formerly policy, in an attempt to clean up the streets and give the football-supporting public a good image of S. Africa, to gather the street kids up and bus them off to somewhere miles away. After a 6 week cessation of these round-ups there was another incident of it in May. It's been denied that the no-round-up policy has been abandoned and we must hope that is true.

For more information about the street kids world cup, visit the website.

2 comments:

jams o donnell said...

The street kids are fqar more ddeserving of support than the greedy, overpaid irrelevances on the pitch

Gledwood said...

Governments can be heartless. (And the sky is blue.)

FIFA, (and who actually are they when they're at home?) insisted on exclusivity of licensing/marketing rights for food not just inside but outside the stadia as well. Which means hundreds of local food vendors, who really could do with the income, are going to get arrested if they dare pitch up in the vicinity.

Who the hell do the people who take these decisions think they are? Perhaps if THEY had lived like that, even just for a couple of years, they might see things very differently...