Thursday, March 22, 2007

Humanitarian efforts

Most of us associate FIFA with the World Cup, international events and on-the-field action. But the sport's powerful governing body also has a humanitarian side to it, as well it should. FIFA has the potential to be an influential force well off the pitch and part of those efforts paid off earlier this week.

As part of its 6 Villages for 2006 campaign, FIFA unveiled its first village earlier this week. This one hit close to home for me. It was in Morelia, capital of my parents' home state of Michoacan.

The unveiling ceremony attracted a large crowd of luminaries, including Tri coach Hugo Sanchez. FIFA constructed a place where children who had been living in extreme poverty can now live safely and hopefully will now have a chance at a decent future.

According to this story on FIFA's web site, future villages will be constructed in Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, Vietnam and Ukraine.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This effort is obviously a wonderful thing. however this quote confused me, "[A] total of 100 kids previously living in the direst poverty will be given a new home and a family in the village of 14 houses."

100 kids will be adopted and spread out with their new families into just 14 houses? So is this some sort of orphanage then? Did something get lost in translation here?

L.B. said...

That part threw me off too. It was late and I was getting tired so I didn't know if it was just me who couldn't think straight or what.

I'll have to read up on the initiative and figure out what exactly it is. It does make it sound like they built a kid's village or something. Maybe it's an orphonage or something along the likes of that.