Trials are taking place to find England’s best homeless
football talents to make up their squad for this year’s Homeless
World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Leading employment specialists Working Links
is working in partnership with The Big Issue in the North and a
host of professional football clubs to fill the squad of eight
which will fly out to South America for the tournament in
September.
The Homeless World Cup is a competition that
aims to use the power of football for the purposes of social
inclusion, to highlight the issue of homelessness and to transform
people’s lives around the world.
Trials for selection are taking place up and
down the country in February and March to find suitable players. To
be eligible, players must be:
- Homeless or vulnerably accommodated at
some point after September 1 2009
- Or are in rehabilitation and have been
homeless at some point since October 1 2009
- Or are asylum seekers currently
without positive asylum status or who were previously asylum
seekers but obtained residency status after September 1 2009
- Players can be male or female and need
to be at least 16 years of age on September 1 2009
Working Links’ Sports Development and Social
Inclusion Manager Richie Ellison has been working with The Big
Issue in the North on this and other projects for the last few
months. Further details of forthcoming events will be announced in
the coming weeks.
To find out more about the
competition, visit http://www.homelessworldcup.org/ or
you are interested in trying out for the team please fill in the
application
form.