Portland

SOCIAL CHANGE STARTS WITH A SOCCER BALL.
Street Soccer – PDX is creating safe places to play, supplying trained coaches, and utilizing an evidence-based curriculum, we are creating long-term changes in our player’s lives.

PORTLAND’S PROGRAMS

Homeless World Cup Program

Playing for pathways out of poverty.

Our Homeless World Cup program reaches the most vulnerable members of our community and provides safe, inclusive space to exist, make friends and find hope.

We use a proven curriculum based on the growth mindset and structured eight different soccer skills, ranging from individual to strategic. With a focus on social emotional learning skills, we’re building our participants’ capacity to achieve higher education and employment outcomes.

In tandem with our on the field curriculum, our caring coaches and mentors connect players to social services agencies to fulfill a certain need off the field. All of Street Soccer’s players are playing for more, more ways to win and more ways to grow. Whether that is securing a place to live, applying for a job, earning a HS diploma or simply scoring a goal, we’re there to provide the tools necessary to succeed.

Community Club Program

Playing for Portland’s future.

Our Community Club programs are free, open practices to youth in low-income areas throughout the city. We serve an extremely diverse group of refugee and immigrant families, many of which are new to Portland. Our players represent dozens of different nationalities and come together for soccer: to find solace, comfort and a place to call home.

Our sessions run year round and follow a growth mindset-based curriculum structured around eight soccer skills. Through these lessons, we link lessons on the field to goals and aspirations off the field, and ultimately build our players’ capacity for improved education and employment outcomes.

By bringing various community and social service organizations into the playing space, and through individualized social service coordination, we drastically increase players’ and their families’ access to culturally responsive social service and community organizations.

Live-In Rehabilitation Facilities and Detention Centers

Playing for a second chance.

These programs are designed to provide youth a productive outlet while serving time in a live-in rehabilitation facility. Our program in collaboration with Parrott Creek prepares youth ages 13-18 to rejoin society.

We use soccer to build community and as the building block to develop life skills. As with our other programs, we use the same proven curriculum to build our players’ capacity for improved education and employment outcomes. The engagement from motivational speakers, Judges, District Attorneys and alike figures in the criminal justice field, provide a breaking down of power dynamics and quite literally a ‘leveling of the playing field’.

These programs serve as the foundation for building healthy communities upon release, as those that played in a live-in facility, transition into one of our Community Clubs or Homeless World Cup programs.

Immigrants and Refugee Program

This program serves unaccompanied minors from mostly Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. They are either immigrants or refugees looking for a better life after being displaced by climate change. With a reduced number of rainy days in their countries and an economy relying on agriculture, our participants in this program come to the U.S. looking to survive a problem they have not created nor can they change.

Outcomes

Street Soccer Portland’s programs are focused on (1) building our participants’ capacity to succeed on and off the field and (2) connecting our participants with life-changing social services and community based referrals.

In 2020 we served 335 people of all ages and backgrounds from Portland’s homeless, refugee, and underserved communities. Neighborhoods reached include; Centennial, David Douglas, Gabriel Park, Downtown, Happy Valley, Montavilla, and Oregon City. To help our participants play for their goals–whether that’s securing a job, earning a high school diploma or finding a place to call home–we provided 212 individual referrals to social service agency resources.

92% of participants improved their Self Efficacy, Emotional Self Regulation, Ability to Trust Others, Social Network, and Physical Health.