10/4/2022
QATAR CHARITY’S ROFAQAA, in cooperation with Qatar Fund for Development and street child united, will be representing Teams Sudan and Bosnia at the Street Child World Cup 2022, hosted in partnership with Qatar Foundation, this October in Doha.
28 teams - 14 girls’ teams and 14 boys’ teams - from 24 countries will take part at the Street Child World Cup (SCWC), bringing together over 500 vulnerable children across the globe. The unique 10-day event will take place from October 5th - 15th and will include an international football tournament, a festival of arts and a congress, all designed to champion the rights of underserved children worldwide.
Speaking about the upcoming tournament, Nawaf AlHammadi, Chief of Global Programs at Qatar Charity said:
“Rofaqaa initiative is our flagship child protection program. We sponsored the first child in 1984 and today, we are at the forefront of child sponsorship in the MENA region with over 188,000 sponsored children across the globe. With the SCWC, we aim at putting the children we serve, their voices and their dreams, under focus. This SCWC, we will listen to what children have to say, their issues but also their solutions and their high hopes, and we will act upon them.”
Street Child United (SCU) Co-Founder and CEO John Wroe commented:
“We are extremely excited for this highly anticipated fourth Street Child World Cup 2022, our first SCWC in the Middle East. With everything the world has been through these past few years, we need positive, meaningful, heroic stories, and every SCWC delivers them in abundance. We can’t wait to shine a spotlight on these inspiring young people so they can tell the world ‘I AM SOMEBODY’.”
The 2022 Street Child World Cup will be the fourth edition of the event following successful tournaments in South Africa (2010), Brazil (2014) and Moscow (2018). The event uses the power of sport to change how the world negatively sees and treats street-connected young people so they can be protected, respected and supported to build a life away from the streets.
For his part, Othman Shabeika, a third-year secondary student who has been sponsored by Qatar Charity since 2014, considered his participation in the World Cup for Children through the Sudan team as an opportunity for him to develop his skills in football and drawing, through the training sessions he received, and said that he is eager to reach Doha to compete with teams. Participate and is looking forward to winning this tournament.
Adam Michitovic, one of the children sponsored by Qatar Charity in Bosnia since 2010, said: “First of all, I aspire to represent my country in the best way, and I hope to win a medal or be crowned with my friends in the tournament.
The success of the Street Child World Cup is reflected in the positive impact it has created over the years.
Following the SCWC 2010, reports on the roundups of street children in Durban helped highlight Umthombos's 10-year campaign to stop them. As a result, roundups were stopped.
Following the SCWC 2014 the Brazilian government invited partner NGO to participate in the first national summit on street connected children. Team Pakistan was also invited to Parliament a resolution requiring all the provincial governments to come up with new strategies to help the 1.5m street kids in Pakistan was duly passed.
In 2018, seven participating teams from SCWC in Moscow were able to take their voice and demands directly to their national governments.
For further information on the Street Child World Cup please visit www.streetchildunited.org