Our Partnership

Partnership is at the heart of One village at a time initiative. We regard partnership as a long-term relationship where the focus is not on a specific project but rather on maximising mutual learning and effectiveness. The Partnership model is part of the overall program strategy, ensuring that right from the start of the Project we address sustainability aspects.

Our work started in 2002, driven by the belief that football can be an effective tool to transform our societies. When we started, we knew that there were community organisations using football to catalyse change in their societies. We based our action on the belief that, to achieve global change, we needed to connect the dots, we needed to create the team, and we needed to act as a collective.

We created the street football world network to identify, connect and empower community organisations that have demonstrated to have a sustainable social impact in their communities, and enable them to do more. Our network currently includes 131 network members that, together, reach over two million people in 86 countries.

For over 15 years, we have been implementing social impact strategies in cooperation with our network members and a wide range of partners – from FIFA and UEFA to sponsors, governments and private partners, who believe in the quality standards that underpin the work of our network.

We want to maximise the power of football for good. That is why we also work develop, incubate and impulse social enterprises – such as Common Goal or the third half – that can contribute to advancing and leveraging the field of football for good, make it sustainable and amplify its global impact.

Our contribution to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

In 2015, for the first time representatives from all layers of society came together to align behind a shared vision of how a better world should look, and put together an action plan to achieve it: the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

Our contribution to the 2030 Agenda is multi-fold

• We work to amplify the impact of football as a catalyst to tackle social change.
• We work to connect the world of football and coordinate collective action to support the Sustainable Development Agenda.
• And, we use football as the universal language to unite the global community to overcome the greatest challenges of our times.