Chile using football to tackle social ills in Jamaica
THE GOVERNMENT of Chile has long been using football to curb some of its social ills, and now, it is extending one of its socialintervention programmes, Fundación Futból Mas (Foundation Football Plus), to the borders of Jamaica.
The programme was launched on National Play Day, November 20, at the Cockburn Gardens Primary School in Kingston by the Chilean Embassy with the objective of uplifting vulnerable communities through participation in football.
The Chilean ambassador to Jamaica, Francisco Bernales, said that he hopes the Jamaican Government will support the programme so that it can be extended across the island.
“We, the embassy, have been supporting Cockburn Garden Primary School, and we decided to start there, but we are hoping to extend it to other schools in the country,” Bernales said. “Our prime minister has been promoting healthy living through sports, and we have decided not just to do it there (in Chile), but in other countries as well.”
In order to implement the programme, the embassy has invited coach at Foundation Football Plus Vicente Valdelamar to the island.
“At the workshop, almost 150 students participated, and we used football to highlight the positive skills they have,” he said. “We chose football because it is a sport which allows one to work as a team to achieve one goal. And the goal here is for everyone participating to improve the communities through their various individual skills.”
He said that special emphasis was made to teach the students and the participating adults how to become resilient.
“We work to develop resilience in the kids, and also with the adults. We want them to understand that they have positive abilities to make their community better,” Valadelamar said. “We are not trying to develop these children [to be] the best players in the world; we are trying to make them better persons.”
According to Valdelamar, Foundation Football Plus is in operation in over eight countries in the world, and it has received nothing but positive results.