Mel Young, President of The Homeless World Cup, was honored with the Celebration of Service award, the first time the honor has been bestowed at the Sports Business Awards. Founded in '03, the Homeless World Cup is in 74 countries and has 100,000 homeless participants per year. During his acceptance speech, Young urged U.S. sports business execs to get involved more in helping the community. In a backstage interview, Young said, “A lot of sports organizations do a lot in the community. I think we can probably do more. We started doing something, we did it well. Let’s do more and build a movement. Sports fans and sports participants get this. But it’s not actually appreciated. We don’t tell the story so well about what sports clubs are doing in the community. In fact, they are doing a lot. It’s an example to other sectors of the community.” Young said that the idea for the Homeless World Cup came about from a '01 bar conversation in Cape Town, South Africa. That led to an event that Young expected to be a one-off event. But it was so successful, that he decided to keep doing it. “If it was only about the event, we wouldn’t do it. It’s about changing the lives of the homeless guys. You see it in front of your eyes. It’s phenomenal. You see sometimes homeless people casting their eyes down with no self respect. Then they start playing football and you can actually see them growing physically. But it’s actually psychologically that they’re changing. We never say to them that they are homeless. We talk about their football.”
