How Football Can Help Children
A Film About Soccer and its Capacity to Allow Poor Kids to Dream
Jun 6, 2009
Petites Historias das Crianças - Viaggio nel mondo di Inter Campus is a different type of film with respect to Mediterraneo, the film that won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1992, but what remains the same is the capacity to allow people to dream.
The film describes the work done around the world by the Inter Campus project, a web of soccer schools financed by FC Internazionale Milan and its president Massimo Moratti.
The dreamers are the stars of the film, the kids. All of them are from poor countries where dreaming is the only thing to do. They are surrounded by war, disease and poverty. These are strong kids. They are always ready to play and always smiling.
Massimo Moratti, FC Internazionale Milano and the Inter Campus Project
F.C. Internazionale, one of the most famous Italian soccer teams, and its president Massimo Moratti, are financing the project of “Inter campus”. They are not just places where kids could play the most beautiful sport in the world, but are also places where they can simply be kids, something that in some countries is not as usual as in others, and participate in educational programs.
Inter Campus is a space where children can find volunteers willing to help them get through their hard life. Education is one of the most important things to help these kids to have a better life.
Maybe a few of them will be rich and famous soccer players but the goal of the program is to steer these kids in the right direction towards education. Most of them could have some hope for the future simply by going everyday to the school.
The idea is to stimulate the children with the sport and to encourage them to study.
Ten Years Working in Silence for A Thousand Kids
The list of the countries where “Inter Campus” is acting to help the children is long: Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Cuba, Iran, Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Mexico, Palestine, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Uganda.
Some of these countries are recovering from war or are in economic trouble, but these kids want to have just a little time to laugh and play. “Inter Campus” has been working quietly for 10 years without big sponsors and not under the spotlight.
More than ten thousand kids have worn Inter shirts in this time, under the supervision of seven people that coordinate more than two hundred professionals and volunteers selected in each country.
The point of all this is to help the children to overcome their hardship.
A Different Way To Relate With Hardship
In the last few years in Europe soccer clubs, journalists and politicians have discussed whether it was right to take young players from poor countries and transport them to a wealthier place where they could have better training and be good professionals.
A lot of soccer teams have done this. Adolescents at 12 or 13 years old started to play on the young teams of the most important European clubs. The project of “Inter Campus” is the opposite.
The goal is to let these kids grow in their own country, with family and friends close to them.
The kids are trained with the same system used in Milano for the Italian young players, this way the campus is not just a place in which they choose the champions for the future but it is an opportunity; an educational and sport experience for all the kids that will never be rich soccer players.
Massimo Moratti, the son of Angelo who in 1960 built the myth of the “Grande Inter”, the most successful team in Italy, Europe and in the world, spoke briefly during the presentation of the movie, but his words about his project were important.
He considers it a privilege to be close to kids who live every day in a difficult situation and to help them to smile, even if just for an hour. That is the goal, make them smile and forget for a while the hardship around them.
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