Generation Amazing, a football for development initiative established in 2010 as part of Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup aims to reach a million beneficiaries by 2022. The pandemic may have slowed the process but the team is quite positive to achieve the target and is efficiently working with stakeholders globally. The Playknox spoke with Nasser Al Khori, Generation Amazing Programmes Director to know more.
What are the current challenges you face due to Covid-19? With no vaccine in sight, how do you still plan to deliver the ‘Generation Amazing’ initiative?
The current COVID-19 pandemic has created a global challenge and disruption to education, sporting activities and communities, including those where Generation Amazing has a presence. We decided to address this challenge by continuing to harness the power of football through online football for development sessions and live chats with some of the world’s leading football stars. By enhancing our presence online, we were able to use our social media platforms to extend our programme to our youth, local and global communities. The live streams have been running on a weekly basis since early April and have received some fantastic feedback from our audiences. We have offered comprehensive access to the programme by inspiring, engaging and connecting participants and our audience at home to the values and life skills we offer.
International football legends, including the likes of Xavi Hernandez, Cafu and Samuel Eto’o have gotten behind this mission, contributing to our joint vision in this initiative to uplift the GA community. These reputable players have spoken about the ways in which football can be used as a development tool during these challenging times. Qatari and global legends like Mubarak Mustafa, Khalid Salman and Almoez Ali, have shared messages of hope, useful advice and inspiration for our young audiences.
Female players like Nadia Nadim, Lianne Sanderson and Allyson Swaby have also gone live with us to discuss topics around women in sport. These remarkable athletes have shared vital perspectives of their experiences and raised awareness on the importance of gender equality, a key focus area of our programme.
Tell us about GA partnering with various clubs/organisations and how those clubs/organisations are supporting the initiative. Also, do you plan to rope in more clubs/countries to be part of the legacy program?
In the lead up to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, the Qatar Football Association (QFA) and our founding body, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), have recently launched a new strategic partnership with Concacaf, the governing organisation for football in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. The partnership will see Generation Amazing and Concacaf’s NextPlay programme help deliver long-term football for development programmes across the region, promoting our joint values and life-skills. A key focus will be community coach development, helping to inspire and empower thousands of young people and expanding the reach of our programmes.
This September we celebrated one year of the impactful football for good partnerships we have developed with Italian club AS Roma and Belgian team KAS Eupen. We also partner on a value in kind basis with Leeds United and Sheffield F.C., and are looking to add further partner clubs to our network as we enhance our global footprint.
We joined hands earlier this year with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to bring football for development programmes to vulnerable youth in Iraq, Myanmar, Uganda and Argentina. In the region, we started working with the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organisation for Arab and Islamic Relief, Development and Cooperation (JHCO) on football for development programmes for refugees and vulnerable communities in Jordan. We have launched a school programme across 20 schools in Oman, alongside our partners at the Ministry of Education in Oman and Sabco Sport, training local P.E. teachers on how to lead football for development sessions that teach life skills like communication, teamwork and leadership. We are also working to expand our programme to Kuwait in the near future.
In Rwanda we are working with the Ministry of Youth and Culture on our first project in Africa, which is a Generation Amazing Community Club that aims to integrate disadvantaged youth from the streets back into society through the transformational power of football. By providing new football and sports facilities and an innovative football for development programme, we will create opportunities for these youth to become leaders and create positive change in their community.
What does the legacy program aim to achieve and how do you plan to reach 1 million beneficiaries?
We aim to use our football for development programmes to reach vulnerable young people across the world, teaching values including gender equality and inclusion, and enhancing life skills like communication, organisation, teamwork and leadership. Besides reaching across four continents to date, we work to give communities with especially limited resources access to a safe place to learn and play. We aim to reach 1 million young people in this way through our football for development sessions and with the support of our growing partner network, by further expanding our programme to wider communities with select development needs. By building a network of partners and like-minded organisations, we believe the aim of improving a million lives by 2022 is both achievable and will leave a significant legacy that will create long-term change in communities across the world.
How are you empowering the local community via the initiative? What kind of activations have you planned for?
We empower young leaders in Qatar, across the region and the world, creating sustainable programmes that generate social development opportunities, in line with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for youth to make a difference through football.
With support from the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and the Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science, the Generation Amazing programme was launched in over 50 schools in our last Generation Amazing on-ground cycle. Thousands of children aged 8 to 12 have benefited from the life-skill learning outcomes, inclusion and gender equality values we teach. Our plan is to reconvene the school programme as soon as it is safe to do so. This in turn will continuously instill in children the tools they will be able use to improve their individual development and future prospects.
We recently launched a programme, for our new cohort of youth advocates, which includes fifteen youth. The selected advocates are both residents and nationals in Qatar who are aged 16 to 24. They will embark on a year-long journey which will guide them towards an active citizenship through football. One of our promising new advocates, 16-year-old Mira Abdelrahman, a Qatar Academy student in Doha from Lebanon, is keen to work with other students to use football for good to make a change and promote equality. Ali Fakhroo from Qatar, another talented youth advocate, is working towards using one of his biggest passions to achieve social development goals and come together with different communities for a common good.
