Research: The Street Child World Cup

Research summary

• May 2018 - March 2019

In 2018, 200 young people from across the world came together in Moscow for the third Street Child World Cup (SCWC). Run by Street Child United, the event provides street-connected children with their own international football tournament, festival of arts and Congress for their rights. 23 national teams (12 girls teams and 11 boys teams) represented their countries on the pitch and worked together to project their message, calling for the rights of millions of children living and working on the streets worldwide.

This project aimed to explore the young people’s experiences of the SCWC and their later transitions back into home communities, to better understand the impact of participating in such events, and potentially inform the development of frameworks for both the organisation of similar events and managing the transition of participants returning home. Understanding both the positive impact and challenges arising from participation could also inform the development of programmes that model similar opportunities locally and/or internationally – especially those that change aspirations and build on these aspirations for the benefit of the participants and their communities. 

Su Corcoran and Jeremy Oldfield attended the SCWC, conducting groups interviews with members of the various teams. They also interviewed project leaders and for some countries the alumni who had participated in the 2010/14 SCWC events and/or the 2016 Street Child Games to find out about the impact since. After the event, Su Corcoran followed up with project leaders and players from some of the teams to find out about the impact of the taking part on the players, their communities and the organisations that support them.