Slide 1
Just One World football assembly
Slide 2Slide 3
Reader 1: Welcome to our very own ‘Spot the ball’ competition! (Slide 2).
We’d like to invite a volunteerto try to spot the ball on this picture from Mexico.
(Choose a volunteer. Let them place a post-it note on the screen where they think the ball should be. Reveal the photo with the ball – slide 3).
Well done!
(Applaud participant back to their seat)
Actually, we’re playing tricks on you. There is no ball on this picture, or at least not a football as we would know it. These children are playing with a ball they’ve made themselves – can you see what it’s made from? (Ask for a few suggestions). It’s actually made from a bundle of rags that have been tied together.
Reader 2: While millions of people love to play football, not everyone has a proper football, so some people make their own. Some use rags like in this photo, and in other places, theymake a ball out of elastic bands or knotted up plastic bags.
Let’s move away from Mexico and think about Brazil. Does anyone know anything about Brazil?Football is definitely the national game in Brazil, and with role models like Ronaldo and Pelé it’s no wonder everyone wants to play. Here’s a poem written by a man called Oriosvaldo Almeida who works with a CAFOD partner in Brazil. It’s about football and also mentions other kinds of ballthat people use.
Reader 3:
Slide4 and 5
Children on a spree
The children kick
Plastic bottles
As though they were the best
Footballs in the world.
The children kick mouldy cucumbers, screwed up balls of paper
And oranges
As though they were the best
Footballs in the world.
(slide 6)
The children make a goal
As though it was the very best
And most beautiful in the world.
They dribble through life
Bruise their feet
Run and attack
No-one holds them back.
Their life is a dream
The dream to be one of life’s goal-scorers.
The daily dream
To be a survivor.
(By Oriosvaldo Almeida, Recife, Brazil)
Reader 4: Can you imagine playing football with a mouldy cucumber?
It’s a bit different when you’re at the top of your game. Last summer,the best players in the worldfrom 32 nations gathered in South Africa for the football World Cup. Thousands of fans travelled from around the world to watch the matches but many South Africans were not be able to afford a ticket to get into a stadium. However, most of Africa
watched the TV with pride, as it is the first time Africa has hosted such a high profile competition.
Reader 5:One country that did not have a team in South Africa, but whose people will definitely watched on TV, was Liberia, in West Africa.. In Liberia, almost half the people who live there, that’s 1.7 million people, survive on less than 33penceper day.
Slide 6
Football in Liberia brings people together. Liberia’s top scorer for the season so far is Teku Nahn. More than ten years ago, he joined the Millennium Stars football team, started by Don Bosco Homes, an organisation supported by CAFOD.
When they started, the Millennium Stars didn’t even have a proper football, let alone football boots or a kit.
Reader 6 :But now the Millennium stars are working hard and are doing really well. But the greatest success of the Millennium Stars and of Don Bosco Homes is the way they are using football to help rebuild a society that has had years of fighting and violence.
Don Bosco Homes runs courses in local schools to help young people who were caught up in the fighting. It works with local youth clubs and football clubs coaching young people in leadership skills, and with girls' clubs who come together to play kickball.
Slide 7
Reader 1: For Don Bosco Homes,playing on a football team is about being positive role models and taking training seriously alongside other responsibilities, like doing schoolwork or chores before practice. Football also raisesthe status of young people in their local community, which is important since so many of them lost self-esteem when they were forced to take part in the violent civil war which ended in 2003. As Liberia recovers from war, organising a football team can help to rebuildcommunities and wider society.
Reader 2: Don Bosco Homes and many of CAFOD’s other partners working around the world, show that football is not just for elite international players. Football is for everybody. As well as being a fun way to exercise, it can be used to develop leadership skills, teach values of fairness and working together, and build community. All these things can help to tackle poverty.
Teku’s goal is not just to become a professional footballer. He wants to be a good role model for other young people as well, building community in Liberia with the Millennium Stars.
Slide 8
Let’s leave Liberia and look at children living in Tanzania.
Meet Kevin. He is 10 years old and loves to play football. Kevin is part of a sports club that brings children together who have been through a lot. Many of the children in the club are orphans who have lost their parents and are living with carers who are struggling to look after them.
Slide 8
By coming together to play football, having fun spending time with each other they are building their confidence and are sharing their experiences, and building a community together with children who have been through similar things to them.
If we all make it our goal to build a just and fair global community, more people will have the chance to reach their full potential. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John: “I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full.” (10:10) (slide 12)
Slide 9
You can make a difference and get involved too! Your school has been invited to be part of a CAFOD football tournament to help raise the money to to help people help themselves out of poverty.
We are asking local primary schools to be part of a football tournament that St Augustine’s High School is going to host this summer. Pupils from years 5/6 are invited to take part and raise sponsorship for CAFOD's programmes working with children and young people who are using football as a tool for community building.
[School specific detail]
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, teach us to play and cheer, not only to win, but to enjoy the game and help others to enjoy it. Help us to play together and work together for a more united and peaceful world.
Lord, in your mercy…
All: Hear our prayer
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