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Connecting communities through soccer is part of Soccer Without Borders’ program strategy, so when Arth Bohra, a high school student from Dougherty Valley, started fundraising for SWB using that exact formula it seemed perfect.
Bohra is a senior in high school and has played soccer for over 11 years. Throughout his time in the club soccer world, he’s noticed huge disparities in resources that different teams have access to. He kept that in mind when he started developing his free app, GoalSmart, which helps soccer players and coaches set goals and track their training progress. The app has been developed and released, and has been piloted with high school players throughout Northern California and downloaded hundreds of times.
“The whole goal of this app is to make sure that youth players are more deliberate about their development,” said Bohra.
Bohra worked for over a year and a half to develop the app, and for every hour that he worked on it he asked people to donate to Soccer Without Borders. In addition to that, he made a page on the app about SWB that led users to the donate page. Through those methods, Bohra has raised over $2,500 in donations for Soccer Without Borders. He recently doubled that amount with a gift of his own — donating a portion of his earnings from work to SWB.
Bohra has admired SWB since hearing about the organization through a club at his school. He’s especially interested in the way in which SWB bridges so many gaps between people through sport.
Throughout the course of building the app, which is free for users, Bohra has seen the power that sport has to connect people, and the way in which technology can be harnessed to enhance those connections as well as young people’s personal growth. He hopes that the app can be a way to make sport development more accessible to everyone.
“I really believe that everyone should be able to have access to free tools to improve their soccer,” Bohra says.