Soccer + Life Skills for Hundreds of Youth

In Cameroon our life skills and girls’ empowerment activities are thriving, engaging more boys and girls than ever before, thanks to continued support from FIFA Foundation and a new grant from the United Nations Development Programme in Cameroon! 

Due to the ongoing crisis in Cameroon, there are more than half a million internally displaced persons in the Southwest and Northwest Regions of Cameroon, with tens of thousands living as refugees in neighboring Nigeria. With support from UNDP, we expanded our Sport for Good programming to serve youth in 12 different neighborhoods in three cities: Kumba, Bamenda, and Mamfe, specifically targeting neighborhoods with a large influx of new youth who have been forced to flee their villages in nearby rural areas.

To support this growth, we expanded our team, bringing on 5 new Community Leaders (bringing that number of part-time employment for young adults to nine total) in addition to our eight full time staff. Currently, our educational soccer leagues engage more than 1,000 youth.

We’re focusing on promoting social cohesion and life skills through the beautiful game, using our youth-led model that we’ve developed over the years. Our training workshops and the structure of our training sessions and league play increase the skills and confidence in teenagers to be role models to younger kids in their neighborhood. 

We believe that every kid deserves a role model - someone to look up to and learn from. In this way, role models create a positive influece and a ripple effect in their community. Your support will ensure more teens get the training they need to become a role model.

Please consider a financial gift to Open Field this holiday season to support youth whose lives will be forever changed by your contribution.

As you may have noticed, we are sporting a brand-new name: Open Field. We’ve come a long way and grown so much since we began this journey as Cameroon Football Development Program in 2010. We’re excited to share this transformative time in our organization’s history with you and begin by saying THANK YOU for your support over the years!

It’s not just our name and logo that have changed, we have expanded our mission, improved our tag line, updated our website, and revamped our social media presence, all to better communicate our global mission to improve the lives and futures of youth through sport. 

So, what’s different? 

For the past 2.5 years, we focused on developing a Sport for Good model to scale and replicate in communities around the world. With continued support from the FIFA Foundation, we prioritized leadership training and skill-building experiences for older youth to serve as mentors and role models on and off the field to younger kids in their community. The result of this investment is a culturally-relevant and flexible approach to programming that is youth-led, community based, and ready to expand. 

Where are we going?

We launched our first U.S. program in Pittsburgh in June. Through collaboration with community-based organizations, our summer programming engaged more than 100 boys and girls ages 5-18 from all different backgrounds in low income neighborhoods across the city. Our Cameroon programming is expanding in two more cities thanks in part to a grant from the United Nations Development Program. Most recently, we signed a memorandum of understanding to explore expansion in another West African country. 

With your support we have made a positive impact in the lives of thousands of youth through the global game of soccer. Looking ahead, we are humbled and thrilled to continue to reach thousands more as Open Field. We welcome you on this next phase of our journey!

Links:

• Check out our new website!
• Video: Launching our new brand!
• NEXT Pittsburgh Article on expansion from Cameroon to USA