On the 20th and 21st of July the streetfootballworld Regional Coordination, Fundación Fu.De., received a visit from Chilean streetfootballworld network member Pac Gol. The purpose of the visit was to exchange experiences with local organisations, which also use street football, education and art as a tool for social change and to promote youth leadership.
At Fu.De. they were welcomed by Fabián Ferraro, the network’s Regional Coordinator for Latin America, and his team to discuss the challenges they face as a grassroots organisation and to share their visions and future expectations.
Learning about local experiences
Pac Gol met with fellow streetfootballworld network members Club Deportivo y Cultural Bongiovanni, Fundación Defensores del Chaco and Club SCB 25 de Mayo de General Rodríguez.
Pablo Montanaro of Club Bongiovanni, and Matías Luna of Defensores del Chaco shared their own experiences, recounting the stories of their respective organisations. Both leaders emphasized the educational and inclusive nature of their work. They explained the challenges they had faced in order to get their organisations established and shared the lessons they had learned in the hope that they had provided their Trans-Andean partners with a valuable insight into the work they do.
“Our visit to Argentina meets with the objectives of generating hope for those who had the opportunity to go there and who are currently in the process of leadership training,” said Sebastián Russ, General Coordinator of Pac Gol.
“The importance of coming to this country is that we believe that their organisational methods are much more advanced and this helps us significantly.
Transformation through art
Street art and the “processes of visual stimulation” as Pac Gol defines it, are a key element of the network member’s organisational strategy. And so during the visit, the Muralistas de Acción Rebelde (M.A.R), a group of mural painters who formed part of the Chilean organisation, painted a mural in the Club SCB 25 de Mayo.
The effort took a whole day: the artists gathered the expectations and essential features that reflect Club 25 de Mayo and expressed them as a mural on a wall. At the end of the day, the club’s members and local residents came along to admire the mural, and, accompanied by street musicians Los Demoledores de Tristeza, the day ended full of colour and with many shared dreams.
