The 2026 World Cup is only two months away, but another major soccer event is set to take the pitch before then.
The Street Child World Cup is an international soccer tournament held for children and young people who have experienced homelessness or street-connected life.
Participants and players are aged 14 to 17 at the time of the Cup.
Now, the purpose of the tournament is to raise awareness of challenges faced by street connectedness and to campaign for the rights, protection and legal IDs for these children.
And just like the FIFA World Cup, these games will take place in Mexico City.
The tournament will feature 32 teams from every global region and take place from May 5th to May 15th.
These games were created and are rubbed by non-profit charity Street Child United, which uses sports as a powerful force for change for street-connected children.
Well, joining me to break this down here at the New York Stock Exchange is John Wroe, the founder and CEO of Street Child United.
Welcome, John.
Thank you.
Great to have you here.
Thank you so much.
My pleasure.
Well, first and foremost, tell us about the problem that you are trying to solve.
So 150 million children on the streets, and we volunteered with street children in 2008.
The issues that are key for them are identity, access to education, protection from violence, and gender equality.
And so I played soccer with a boy called Andile.
He'd been on the streets for 10 years.
And he said, when people see me on the streets, they say I am a street child.
But when they see me playing soccer, they say I am a person.
I'm a person like you.
And that gave us the idea of organizing a World Cup for Street Children, which we did in South Africa in 2010.
And we had amazing impact in the countries that these street children came from.
So it's a football tournament, it's arts activities, and it's a congress on children's rights.
And we finish with a general assembly where the young people tell the world what they want to change.
Yeah, and I know that many in the U.S. are looking forward to the World Cup, but at the same time, I do want to hear about this cup that is coming up.
Tell us more.
Well, we say it's the World Cup that matters.
The legacy of this World Cup, and we only do it because the FIFA World Cup is here.
We do it just before the FIFA World Cup.
We've got 32 teams coming from all over the world.
It's a great moment for us at the moment because this only happens when the world unites.
We've got children in Palestine, in Bangladesh, in the Democratic Republic of Congo that need visas at the moment.
They've got their birth certificates, they've got their passports, but they've got to get their visas stamped.
And that only happens when the whole world conspires with us.
This is united.
It's united street children from all over the world.
It's also united people of goodwill to get on board with these street children and to make it happen, to bring those young people together for this World Cup.
It's, you know, it's incredibly exciting when the team, we've done it in Brazil, in South Africa, Russia, Qatar, and then this year it'll be in Mexico City, so in North America.
And it's the fifth time we've done it, when the team from Pakistan got back to Karachi, there were 7,000 people to meet them at the airport.
It's an amazing impact these young people can have in their countries.
The Pakistani government, as a result of the first ever census of street children, they counted their street children for the first time.
And they also passed funding for child protection training to be delivered jointly by the police and street child social workers.
That's an amazing outcome for us.
When India got back to Chennai, they met with Manika Sanjay Gandhi, the Minister for Women and Children, and she promised to provide six million Aadhaar cards, identity documents, for street children in her country.
This is all because the world is watching them.
The world is on the side of these young people.
They're no longer ashamed of them because they're at a World Cup, they're wearing their national jersey and they're proud of them.
And when you've got the will of a whole country on the side of street children, change can happen.
Yeah.
And speaking of change, John, we're here on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
There are a lot of sports analogies when it comes to the massive movements we see across the markets.
But I do want to get your take on the transformation that you see on the pitch with these children.
And what can the global community actually do to step up?
Yeah.
Well I was thinking about, I would say the currency of Street Child World Cup is tears and laughter.
You say it's the World Cup of hope, the World Cup of joy and the World Cup of peace.
The transformation that happens is we call it the I am somebody World Cup.
Everything that happens to these young people and they're obviously supported before, during and after by their local organisation that come with them.
Every interaction that happens with them reinforces the message that I am somebody, that they matter, that their voices matter, that they will be listened to.
And you just see them grow and grow in confidence, not just on the pitch, but also in the arts activities and in the way they communicate their message to the world.
So it's the I am somebody World Cup.
And it's amazing because we've been doing this in 2010.
So some of these young people are 24, 25 now.
They've gone on.
They've completed their schooling.
I've got one from Tanzania that's about to graduate in the UK doing an international business course.
So it's lovely staying on the journey with these young people many years after.
Well, John, I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for joining us.
And thank you so much for sharing this World Cup of Hope as well as identity.
