“Kicking It!” a movie about the Homeless World Cup, don’t laugh.

Everybody knows that in the United States we call it “soccer”, and the rest of the world calls it football.

But did you know that over 1 billion people in the world are homeless! And what’s the most popular sport in the world? “Kicking it”, the ball that is.  All over the world, one sees the poor taking a refreshment from their daily trials on the field, and for those minutes or hours they are as a rich in enjoyment as the greatest of professional game players.  Furthermore a championship world cup in the world’s most popular sport and one that draws only from the 1/5 to 1/6 of the world’s most vulnerable population is one of the most incredible ideas I have heard of for a long time.

Last night I had the privilege of watching the film “Kicking it!” about how a ball can change the life of a displaced person in the most dramatic of ways. It chronicles the lives of six homeless or formerly homeless individuals from five countries and how participating in playing in organized street ball can be taken all the way to a very real world championship tournament, in this case in South Africa emceed by  Bishop Desmond Tutu.

The idea was founded in 2001by  Mel Young co-founder of The Big Issue Scotland, and Harald Schmied, editor of Megaphon, a street paper in Austria while attending the International Network of Street Papers conference that was in Cape Town, South Africa. (wikipedia)

Colin Farrell gives the intros and exits to the documentary but the real characters are the six otherwise marginalized people who have the privilege of playing in the tournament:  Najib from war torn Afghanistan; Alex from the slums of Kenya; Damien and Simon from the drug rehab clinics of Dublin, Ireland; Craig from the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina; Jesus from the overflowing public shelters of Madrid, Spain, and Slavan from the shadow culture of the illegal rural immigrants to the big city of St. Petersburg, Russia. (movies.aol.com)

For those who care about the human condition, those in the poverty scene looking for ideas,  fans of any sport will enjoy this movie.  I enjoyed writing this article particularly to learn that other writers in my sector were responsible for making this happen.  I hope you’ll watch it then take some action in your area with a great idea as well.

btw I saw it on hulu.com, but I ‘m sure you can find the movie elsewhere.

Paul Gydos

The Magi Center – A Socially Oriented Small Business Launchpad

Proposal for: THE MAGI CENTER LLC

A Community Oriented Private Enterprise (COPE) which has in its mission to manage a small business launchpad in Downtown Greensboro.

We hope to share our intention with our potential landlord, Mr. A.B. and Ms. Lillian Rauch, then gather letters of intent from hopeful and existing small business owners who may want to locate there. In order that these letters of intent may be taken seriously by our potential host, we plan to take an administrative filing fee for each of them proportional to the amount of space the potential candidate business is hoping to occupy.

The organization will hope to lease the building as early as September 1st, 2008 with an option to buy the building as soon as it is available.

Location:

121 S. Elm St.
Greensboro, NC 27401 is the proposed available location

Potential location for Magi Center

FREE VERSION OF THE STORY

http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html

MUSIC

Squirrel Nut Zippers has an album called Christmas Carivan

you can find the discography at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Caravan

Track 8 is called “The Gift of the Magi”

ORGANIZATIONS WITH A SIMILAR NAME WHICH MIGHT BE RELEVANT

Susan Zuidema, Director
Giving@TheMagiGifts.com
Phone: 616-878-9900
Fax: 616-878-9921

Office Address:
2470 Byron Station SW
Byron Center, MI 49315

Mailing address:
P.O. Box 43
Byron Center, MI 49315

http://www.themagigifts.org

Recipient Qualification Application
http://www.themagigifts.org/upload/MagiRecipientQualificationApplication.pdf

Opinion – the upper middle class doesn’t see it.

Asking customers and acquaintances if they were seeing the slowdown in the economy affecting them, I’ve gotten an almost universal response of no.

So when will they realize that the global billionaires aren’t going to include them either (the millionaires and the middle class)?

Probably when they can’t get any food either. Then they will have to leave their houses and fancy jobs to head wherever there might be food.

Of course, right now the middle class doesn’t see it. In that way, the impoverished are advantaged, because they are already used to being pushed around and marginalized and controlled by food supplies, etc.

Just my opinion.