![]() ![]() Jackson dropped out of school and spent weeks searching for a place to live until other young unhoused people told her about Wind Youth Services, an organization and haven for homeless teenagers in need of refuge and basic necessities. Jackson, the US player, became unhoused at the age of 19, she said, when her mother kicked her out of the house after finding out she had been drinking while attending a community college in Sacramento. The World Cup shows a different side,” Sacramento’s mayor, Darrell Steinberg, said in a statement. “In our collective frustration about homelessness, unsheltered people too often get stripped of their humanity. ![]() “We are using the sport in a constructive way to get people off the streets, so that’s the message we are giving to people in Sacramento and in California.” “This isn’t a California problem, it’s a global problem, and what we need to be doing is not continually talking about the problem, but actually concentrating on what the solution is,” Mel Young, a Homeless World Cup co-founder, said, two decades after he arranged the first tournament in Graz, Austria. We are using the sport in a constructive way to get people off the streets Mel Young of the Homeless World Cup ![]() In 2022, the state reported nearly 10,000 unaccompanied unhoused youth on a single night, the largest number in the country.Ĭalifornia is considered the most unaffordable state in the country, with people earning the minimum wage having to work 90 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment. The state counts more than 171,000 people experiencing homelessness, a third of the homeless population in the US. The tournament comes at a time when California is battling a dire homelessness emergency. More than 300 players are competing in the tournament, divided over 40 national teams – 28 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams, hoping to reach the finals on 15 July and getting back into society eventually. Organized by Street Soccer USA and its chapter in Sacramento, the Homeless World Cup aims to use the sport of soccer to inspire unhoused people and reshape attitudes towards homelessness. “I went from laying out there with the cockroaches, sleeping out with rats, to scoring a goal for my country,” Jackson said. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |