Soccer Without Borders Oakland

Oakland Refugee and Immigrant Student Wellness Program

Boys Team at the Founders Cup in Morgan Hill, CA 2009Project Partners: Oakland International High School, Oakland Unified School District Department of Transitional Families, Refugee Transitions. Funded by Oakland Fund For Children and Youth

Project Summary: A year round soccer program for high school aged refugee, asylee and immigrant youth attending Oakland International High School that focuses on health and leadership. Please view this video to get an interactive look at the program and its impact: 

Background Information: There are currently over 50,000 refugees in the Bay Area, with nearly 400 being resettled in the East Bay each year. This number includes over 1,500 refugee/asylee students in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) alone. They arrive in Oakland from all over the world (Liberia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Burma, etc.) but they share a common bond: most have survived traumatic experiences in their homelands, including loss of family members, torture, and other indescribable horrors, and have lost precious years of education due to war and resettlement. They arrive at American schools expected to quickly acclimate and learn, but wartime experience has had a profound effect not only on these children’s education, but also on their ability to maintain a sense of physical and emotional safety, to become part of a community, and to develop healthy relationships with adults and peers. Despite the fact that many of them have lost vital years of schooling due to their hardships (or may never have attended formal schooling at all), they are assigned to American classrooms based almost solely on their age, with limited support, language skills assistance, or orientation to U.S. schools. Compounding the problem is the fact that many refugee parents lack knowledge of the American education system and often have little or no formal schooling or English language skills themselves, leaving these youth without family advocates.

Many of these students bring  their love of soccer with them, and because of its univeral popularity, soccer creates a unique platform for students to work together across language and cultural barriers. 

Project History:

Girls Team after their first game, 2009As part of the OUSD’s efforts to better serve the refugee/asylee population, a department was created specifically to serve refugee and asylee students. Because of SWB’s past successes working with this population of students during the annual Oakland Refugee Community Soccer camp, we were written into a grant in partnership with several other youth development organizations in the Bay Area, including Refugee Tranistions, Girls Inc., and Cycles of Change. Together, these organizations provide a wide range of services to students at Oakland International High School, where most refugee/asylee students are referred because of the schools unique and effective approach to working with immigrant students. 

Our program began in the fall of 2008 with high-school aged boys and girls teams. The boys began competing in the Jack London Youth Soccer league as a class 4 team. On the first day of practice about 18 boys dressed in jeans and sneakers showed up on the outfield of a baseball diamond. The players present hailed from Burma, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Morocco, Ghana, Liberia, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Not a single student on the team had been in the US for more then two years. For almost every single player, this was to be their first experience playing on an organized team. The first game was an exciting day, and within a week, the number of players swelled to 27. There was considerable excitement about playing in uniforms against another team. We won our first game 7-0, and spirits were very high. The next week, we came out feeling confident and lost 7-1. From that point on, the season continued, with lessons (sometimes difficult) about teamwork, communication, and cross-cultural understanding meeting us at every turn.

By the end of the season, the team had built something special. The group coalesced and practices began looking more and more professional. With guidance from the coaches, the team elected their own captains, created their own team contract outlining behavior standards, and practices began becoming places where players came to learn and not only to play.

Warming up, 2009While this was happening on the Boys side, the girls began practicing as well, and began competing in the spring of ’09. The fall served as an introduction to the game of soccer for many of the girls. Through the first year, practices were sometimes challenging and other times enthusiastic and full of energy, laughter and some of the best goal celebrations imaginable. The girls played their first game in March of 2009, marking the first organized soccer game for 90% of the players. 

Project Vision:

The objectives of the Soccer Without Borders program in Oakland are the following:

•  Solidify and expand the girls team
•  Integrate more life-skills sessions into the program
•  Equip new players on both teams with the equipment needed
•  Train and place adult refugee/immigrant youth as assistant coaches in the programs