The City of Cape Town is strengthening its partnership with Oasis Reach For Your Dreams through the Homeless World Cup programme, using sport as a developmental and therapeutic intervention to support people who have experienced homelessness and rough sleeping on their journey towards reintegration.
Last week, trials for the World Cup concluded with eight players selected to represent South Africa at the event in Mexico in January next year.
Nearly 60 players participated in the initial trials held on 27 August, of which 22 players were selected to progress to a second round of trials held last week at Oasis Business Park.
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Participation in Local and International Level
Oasis Reach For Your Dreams NGO has coordinated Cape Town’s participation in the Homeless World Cup programme for many years, creating opportunities for people who have experienced homelessness to participate in soccer at local and international level.
Oasis Reach For Your Dreams NGO has been supporting dreams since 2000, using sport, social skills and vocational training, homing and accommodation, subsistence horticulture, access to work contracts and social outreach projects as drivers for real positive change in communities.
They strive to provide opportunities for the youth to escape criminality and gangsterism through sports programmes, offer housing and reintegration services to the homeless, assist impoverished communities with our subsistence gardening projects, and provide a host of outreach projects to engage, enskill and integrate communities.
This year marks an important development in the programme, with Oasis collaborating more closely with the City as part of Cape Town’s broader Strategy to Reduce Rough Sleeping and its commitment as a Vanguard City Programme.
‘The strategy recognises that responding to homelessness requires more than providing temporary accommodation. Sustainable reintegration requires a person-centred approach that addresses the circumstances that contribute to homelessness while creating opportunities for people to rebuild confidence, relationships, skills and a sense of purpose.
Sport can play an important role in this journey and the City is proud to support the Homeless World Cup,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services and Health, Councillor Francine Higham.
Create a Positive Community
Participation in a sport such as soccer provides structure, encourages discipline and teamwork, and creates a positive community in which participants can develop friendships and experience a renewed sense of belonging.
For people who have experienced the isolation and exclusion associated with living on the streets, these social connections can form an important part of rebuilding their lives.
The initiative also supports Cape Town’s commitments under the Vanguard Programme, through which the City is working with partners to advance practical and collaborative interventions aimed at preventing homelessness where possible and, where it does occur, rare, brief and non-recurring.
Oasis forms part of Cape Town’s Vanguard Action Committee, bringing its experience of working directly with people experiencing homelessness into the City’s collaborative response to rough sleeping.
This year’s participants were drawn from different shelters and organisations, including Oasis, MES and The Haven Night Shelters, with participation also extending to MES programmes in the Eastern Cape and Johannesburg.
The Homeless World Cup programme provides another avenue through which people can be engaged, supported and connected to opportunities that contribute towards sustainable reintegration.
‘This collaboration is also an example of how the Strategy to Reduce Rough Sleeping can be translated into practical interventions. As local government, we cannot address the issue alone and through partnerships with NGOs, shelters, communities, the private sector and people with lived experience, we can work together to reduce the number of rough sleepers,’ added Councillor Higham.
The squad of eight players will be announced on 13 October.
