Most ideas that originate on a bar napkin are long forgotten by the following morning. The Homeless World Cup is one of the exceptions.
From that unlikely start in a pub, when two friends were wondering what they could do to have an impact on the world, the event was launched in 2003 and today hosts teams with 100,000 participants from 74 countries. That record of perseverance and success in bringing attention to a pervasive, worldwide problem led SportsBusiness Journal/Daily to honor the Homeless World Cup and its founder, Mel Young, at the 2017 Sports Business Awards with the inaugural Celebration of Service Award.
Young, after accepting the award, urged U.S. sports business executives to get involved more in helping their communities. “A lot of sports organizations do a lot in the community,” he said. “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.”
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SBJ/SBD Executive Editor Abe Madkour presents Mel Young with the inaugural Celebration of Service Award.
Photo by: MARC BRYAN-BROWN
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Executive Editor Abe Madkour, in his introduction of the award, said going forward at the Sports Business Awards, “Every year, we’ll share one cause that warrants attention and appreciation.” Madkour said Young’s work with the Homeless World Cup was selected because he “has used sports to help lift more than a million men and women around the world out of the frightening despair of homelessness, mental illness, poverty and addiction.”
Young, who received a standing ovation from the crowd that filled the ballroom of the New York Marriott Marquis at Times Square, added, “If it was only about the event, we wouldn’t do it. It’s about changing the lives of the homeless. 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.”
