{"id":11205,"date":"2024-11-22T16:27:51","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T15:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scort.org\/?post_type=young_coach&p=11205"},"modified":"2025-12-09T07:15:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T06:15:27","slug":"alex-ecuador-2024","status":"publish","type":"young_coach","link":"https:\/\/scort.org\/en\/young_coach\/alex-ecuador-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex – Ecuador 2024\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My<\/div><\/div>
Story<\/div><\/div>
Alex<\/div><\/div><\/h1><\/div>\n
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Alex, a Young Coach in Sucumb\u00edos, Ecuador, works with children and youth from indigenous communities, using grassroots football as a tool to promote inclusion, teamwork, and values. Through playful activities and socio-emotional skills training, he creates safe spaces where shy children can open up, connect with others, and strengthen social bonds within their communities. Inspired by his own experiences growing up, Alex is dedicated to empowering the next generation while keeping the joy of the game at the heart of his work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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My Story<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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My name is Alex, I am a Young Coach working in several communities in the province of Sucumb\u00edos. My work focuses on playful activities with children and youth from several indigenous communities. We practice football for development, which is grassroots football, not competitive. We encourage inclusion, fair play, teamwork, and we also instill values through this sport. We bring the kids together, start with a socialization activity or socio-emotional skills training, and then we play a small football game where everyone participates and, above all, we focus on respecting values.<\/p>\n

The goal of my work is to provide the kids with a safe, enjoyable, and fun space. A place where, besides having fun, they can learn values, emotional skills, teamwork, and how to share with others. Many of the kids in the communities are shy and don\u2019t talk much. Sometimes they look at you and then kind of hide. So you have to approach them, saying, \u201cCome on, join us, let\u2019s play.\u201d The goal is to help them open up a little, to talk more, to greet people when they see them, saying, \u201cGood morning\u201d or \u201cGood afternoon.\u201d This ultimately improves the social dynamics within the community and helps them relate better to people from other communities.<\/p>\n

The main challenges the kids face are tied to living in community areas. Many of their parents work on farms\u2014what they call chakras there. The kids have very little free time, and the time they do have is often used to help out on the farms. Sometimes the parents have to work far away, so they leave the oldest sibling in charge of the younger ones. These kids already have this sense of \u201cI can\u2019t leave the house, I want to play, but I can\u2019t because I have to take care of my siblings,\u201d or \u201cI can\u2019t do sports activities because I need to help my dad at the farm.\u201d<\/p>\n

My parents are also farm workers and I worked on farms as a kid too, so I understand that really well. It\u2019s helped me understand the kids\u2019 situation and made me want to provide them with a space for games\u2014something I wanted when I was a child but didn\u2019t have. When I grew up, I got involved with FUDELA and I\u2019ve been working with them for more than six years now. When I first started working with the kids, I thought, \u201cOh no, they\u2019re not paying attention; this isn\u2019t working.\u201d But as soon as I started seeing small changes in the children\u2019s behaviour, I enjoyed it. And from there, I kept going, and I really like it.<\/p>\n

I applied to the Young Coaches project because we were organizing a mixed community football tournament in the area. There, we don\u2019t use red or yellow cards\u2014we use white and blue cards. Instead of punishing, we reward actions like fair play or inclusion by giving points for those actions. Related to that, I felt my techniques weren\u2019t very tactical. I\u2019m more recreational, but not very tactical. Like, how do you kick the ball properly? How do you do drills? I saw the first Young Coach Education in Ecuador and noticed how much people learned. I thought, \u201cWith these tools, I can strengthen the kids.\u201d Even though it\u2019s not competitive football, they can learn new techniques, and we can continue attracting them to these spaces by keeping the activities fresh and not repetitive.<\/p>\n

The education has been really great, I\u2019ve enjoyed it a lot. I\u2019ve met new friends, extraordinary people, really amazing. The coaches are fantastic. Everything has been really good. I\u2019ve had a lot of fun, and I\u2019ve learned a lot, mostly lots of games\u2014so many games! Also the idea of training a Peer Young Coach – I\u2019ve been thinking about encouraging some of the kids to step up so that, when I\u2019m not around, they can take charge of these activities. So these two tools, along with many others, are what I\u2019ll take with me.<\/p>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n

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Quick Facts<\/div>
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    \n Ecuador II 2024\/25 <\/div>\n <\/li>\n
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    \n FUDELA <\/div>\n <\/li>\n
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    \n 280 Benefitting Children <\/div>\n <\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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