My

Story

Alex

My name is Alex, I am a Young Coach working in several communities in the province of Sucumbíos. 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.

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’t talk much. Sometimes they look at you and then kind of hide. So you have to approach them, saying, “Come on, join us, let’s play.” The goal is to help them open up a little, to talk more, to greet people when they see them, saying, “Good morning” or “Good afternoon.” This ultimately improves the social dynamics within the community and helps them relate better to people from other communities.

The main challenges the kids face are tied to living in community areas. Many of their parents work on farms—what 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 “I can’t leave the house, I want to play, but I can’t because I have to take care of my siblings,” or “I can’t do sports activities because I need to help my dad at the farm.”

My parents are also farm workers and I worked on farms as a kid too, so I understand that really well. It’s helped me understand the kids’ situation and made me want to provide them with a space for games—something I wanted when I was a child but didn’t have. When I grew up, I got involved with FUDELA and I’ve been working with them for more than six years now. When I first started working with the kids, I thought, “Oh no, they’re not paying attention; this isn’t working.” But as soon as I started seeing small changes in the children’s behaviour, I enjoyed it. And from there, I kept going, and I really like it.

I applied to the Young Coaches project because we were organizing a mixed community football tournament in the area. There, we don’t use red or yellow cards—we 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’t very tactical. I’m 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, “With these tools, I can strengthen the kids.” Even though it’s 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.

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