{"id":16972,"date":"2014-07-30T16:18:08","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T19:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=16972"},"modified":"2015-08-14T19:12:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T22:12:00","slug":"escola-bola-soccer-and-citizenship-in-santa-marta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=16972","title":{"rendered":"Escola Bola: Soccer and Citizenship in Santa Marta"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the pitch at the very top of favela\u00a0Santa Marta<\/a>, a group of kids play a\u00a0spirited\u00a0game of soccer, dribbling and shooting to the sound of bumping funk music. Green netting stretches overhead, covering the pitch and catching any stray balls before they can sail into thin air. A few kids perch on a nearby roof, flying kites<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Besides recently hosting the Copa Popular<\/a>\u00a0(People’s Cup), this soccer field is home to Escola Bola<\/a>\u00a0(Ball School), a program that provides\u00a0free soccer lessons to kids in Santa Marta.\u00a0Escola Bola<\/a>\u00a0was originally instituted by the State government as part of\u00a0UPP Social<\/a>, the bundle of social programs that accompanied Santa Marta’s Pacifying Police Unit (UPP)<\/a>\u00a0in Santa Marta in 2008.\u00a0There are currently\u00a038 UPPs<\/a> installed across Rio’s favelas. While heavy criticism of police brutality has overshadowed the program’s initial premise, Santa Marta’s UPP has been primarily\u00a0well-received. Police officers and residents are on good terms, and officers sometimes join in on soccer games with the kids.<\/p>\n

In 2008, after overseeing\u00a0the soccer pitch’s construction, the State government hired\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Luiz de Oliveira to head the program, offering soccer\u00a0lessons Monday through Friday. From kindergarten-age kids just starting out\u00a0to\u00a0teenagers with a real knack for soccer, the program served 100 youths from the community with sessions divided by age group. It was a great success.<\/p>\n

In 2009 the State abruptly cut all\u00a0funding for the program. Jos\u00e9\u2019s R$600\/month salary dried up without warning. With many\u00a0of Santa Marta’s kids now\u00a0depending\u00a0on the\u00a0soccer lessons\u00a0that Escola Bola offered, Jos\u00e9 decided\u00a0to keep the program going, with or without State\u00a0funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s what I love\u00a0to do,” he says. “I\u2019ve had others to help me. I don\u2019t have my own kids to support and I\u2019m not married, so it\u2019s worked out somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the next year and a half after the funding was cut, Jos\u00e9 continued to give lessons with no financial compensation besides small contributions from the students\u2019 parents.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Unlike most\u00a0of Rio\u2019s other pacified favelas, situated far from the public eye in the North Zone<\/a>, Santa Marta has always had unusual visibility by virtue of its location. Situated right above Rio\u2019s wealthy South Zone<\/a>, Santa Marta climbs up the steep slope towards Corcovado, looking out the middle class neighborhood Botafogo and Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon.<\/p>\n

Besides visibility due to its centrality, Santa Marta has received widespread media attention ever since Michael Jackson’s \u00a0\u201cThey Don\u2019t Care About Us\u201d<\/a>\u00a0music video was filmed in the favela.\u00a0The combination of physical proximity and media visibility has resulted in a far higher level of government support and investment in Santa Marta than in nearly any other favela in Rio.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite this, neither the\u00a0City or State government has stepped in to fill in the gap in funding\u00a0left by the State.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been promises, outlines for City projects, but so far, nothing,\u201d explains Jos\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Funding\u00a0<\/em>was coming from the State of Rio de Janeiro, which has a less rigorous monitoring system than the city. At the state level there is little\u00a0accountability for projects such as Escola Bola\u00a0in the years after they have been established.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City has to register everything, but the State doesn\u2019t keep a registry. There\u2019s nothing binding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 had hoped to get enough visibility during the World Cup to gain the funding back but so far the program\u2019s only income comes from non-profit organizations and Santa Marta’s own residents. A Brazilian NGO called Alfa stepped in last year to help foot the bills, and is now covering most of Jos\u00e9’s former salary. The lessons remain free for all the kids, though\u00a0some parents still\u00a0insist on contributing.<\/p>\n

While Escola Bola is a soccer program that builds\u00a0technical skills, its larger\u00a0goal\u00a0is to have\u00a0a broadly positive impact on the lives of the favela’s\u00a0youth. Jos\u00e9 says he is not interested in forming professional soccer stars, but teaching kids how to be good citizens.<\/p>\n

“Above all, I want to form citizens. The kids need to know their rights, their duties. They need to learn how to defend themselves, to respect their parents, to respect their peers, to avoid becoming obsessed with grandeur. I\u2019m trying to pass on these kinds of values.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program has had several small victories lately. On July 10, Escola Zico 10, the NGO of former soccer star Zico, hosted\u00a0COPA SOC14L, a \u00a0soccer tournament between teams from 8 pacified favelas. After the competition, the organizers decided to donate the synthetic turf used in the tournament to Santa Marta’s soccer field. Before the donation, the turf was “done for, uneven, causing\u00a0accidents for our athletes.” The field hadn’t received any maintenance since the 2008 investment.<\/p>\n

Manuel Gon\u00e7alves, Rio’s Secretary of the Ministry of Sport and Leisure, announced\u00a0the donation. According to the\u00a0article\u00a0on Zico 10’s website,<\/a> Gon\u00e7alves “was very pleased to see more young people being able to receive quality sports equipment.”<\/p>\n

There was no mention of the fact that the lack of government funding was the reason for Santa Marta’s deteriorating equipment in the first place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 and his friends hauled the turf up to the top of Santa Marta themselves, removing the old and installing the new without any glue. The\u00a0NGO donors and the Government failed to provide any adhesive for the new turf, so\u00a0the\u00a0squares lie dangerously loose on the field.\u00a0Escola Bola is now waiting on three buckets of glue promised by another NGO to finish the job.<\/p>\n

Throughout our short interview, Jos\u00e9\u00a0pauses\u00a0to greet passing neighbors and throw glances back towards the pitch, keeping an eye on his students. Night has fallen, but\u00a0since\u00a0the\u00a0lights that normally illuminate the pitch are not working, class is cancelled for the evening.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9’s\u00a0popularity with the kids is evident, as is his commitment to the program. The combined forces of\u00a0Jos\u00e9, Santa Marta\u00a0residents, UPP officers, and various NGOs like Alfa and Escola Zico 10, have kept Escola Bola\u00a0afloat so far.\u00a0Without any\u00a0government support, though,\u00a0Escola Bola\u00a0has no guarantee of long-term security, something the\u00a0kids from Santa Marta who depend on the program\u00a0clearly deserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the pitch at the very top of favela\u00a0Santa Marta, a group of kids play a\u00a0spirited\u00a0game of soccer, dribbling and shooting to the sound of bumping funk music. Green netting stretches overhead, covering the pitch […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":16981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1268,1284],"tags":[1102,221,15,152,66,1173,156,207,145],"writer":[1318],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-favelaculture","8":"category-interviews-profiles","9":"tag-community-leader-profile","10":"tag-favela-culture","11":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","12":"tag-participation","13":"tag-santa-marta","14":"tag-soccer","15":"tag-south-zone","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-upp-social","18":"writer-elena-hodges"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16972"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=16972"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=16972"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=16972"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=16972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}