NEWS FROM CHICAGO: The Good Contagion

This message comes from Jason Holmes of our affiliate HESED HOUSE. Read to the end to see the ripple effect of positive programming.

"Things have been so great around here. I finally found a replacement at assistant coach. Mike, our new assistant coach, has a great soccer background and is also bi-lingual. He played soccer in Guatemala for a while and is well versed in the game. I’m real excited to have him on board. He’s got great spirit and is completely in line with what this program is all about. Also our team is getting a lot of support from their peers here at the shelter and a lot of our guests not on the team plan on coming to next Tuesdays game to watch and cheer our team on. We have been seeing some great results from our players and I couldn’t be more proud of them both on and off the soccer pitch. Our game next week will be covered by the Chicago Tribune and the Beacon Newspapers. I’ll be sure to get you links to the articles or send hard copies when they are available. Also I plan on getting some video footage and putting it up on the website. A church member donated a video camera to the team for filming practices and games.

Also at today’s director’s meeting I handed around a copy of the People article. I’ve been doing my best to spread the word to everyone I come in to contact with. Everyone has been so supportive of the program and a lot of people are on board with a sports-based solution to homelessness.

Hesed House is so very proud to be involved in this great program. You’ve inspired me to a new level and I can’t thank you enough. Thank you for all that you do.

One last thing….the soccer program has motivated others at the shelter to get involved in other sorts of esteem building activities. A woman here at the shelter asked me when I was going to start a type of program she’s interested in. I replied with, “What are you interested in?” She said she wanted to lose weight for the New Year. With her idea and our help, we put together this “Biggest Loser” Hesed House program and just had our weigh in Monday. We have 7 guests here at the shelter participating and 4 staff members! All of this was inspired by what the soccer team is doing! Enthusiasm is contagious!"

What Do We Think . . .Hot or Homeless?

Should we have sense of humor about this or be deeply troubled? Curious to hear your thoughts? Don't be shy.(please subscribe to our rss feed, btw!)

And it keeps on rolling . . . A note from the Sacramento, CA Program

Chris "Super" Mann of Sacramento wrote this about his team on Friday:
"We have taken a two week break for the holidays but will start up again next week. This work is truly inspiring. Since the beginning of our trek all of our guys minus one has stayed clean and sober, 7 of them are in school two have found work and 5 of them have quit smoking. What a blessing."

It's thanks to Chris and others that we implement programming and achieve our mission of Soccer 4 Social Change!

PS: We want to recognize Karla Gray and her group from the Salvation Army in Dallas: They just finished their second month of training!

Street Soccer USA in PEOPLE

People Magazine's 5 page feature on SSUSA is in newsstands today. Thank you, PEOPLE, for shining light on those who struggle with homelessness. Street soccer is bring communities together to solve homelessnes, and this article will help us towards those ends.

Intern with SSUSA

Please email and attach resume if you are interested in interning now or this summer: volunteer@streetsoccerusa.org

The Global Game

If you haven't bookmarked the Global Game on your browser, take the time to do it now; here's the link. The site gives you great access to all the culture and human spirit which frames the beautiful game we see in stadiums, on TV, and once every four years. It's the dedicated project of John Turnbull, but not his only project. He, Thomas Satterlee and Alon Raab have edited and published a bookturnbull_color.pdf.

My email updates about our first homeless soccer team, Art Works Football Club, are collected and included in the anthology. We are extremely humbly in the company of writers such as Ted Hughs, Charles Simic, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gunter Gras, Gay Talese, just to name a few. The order form is attached here but you can also purchase this on Amazon. Happy reading!