A group of California-based activists is trying to form a soccer team of Darfur refugees to compete in the Viva World Cup, an international competition for countries not in the World Cup.
And a social studies teacher from Seymour was picked to be one of the coaches.
Brian Cleveland, 30, spent the first week of April at a United Nations refugee camp in eastern Chad, coaching a ramshackle group of refugees on how to play soccer.
The atmosphere was entirely different from what Cleveland, a Seymour resident and high school soccer coach, is used to.
For starters, not all of the players at the refugee camp even had shoes: Many played barefoot.
The team had to start practice before dawn, to beat the afternoon heat in the African desert.
The players had no formal training. Some have spent their entire adult lives living in refugee camps.
“They have nothing,” Cleveland said recently, after returning from the trip.
The soccer team — called Darfur United — is an effort to give the refugees a common goal, and a purpose, after they have faced so much turmoil.
Background
The refugee camps in eastern Chad house about 264,000 Sudanese refugees, who fled conflict in the war-torn region of Darfur, according to a fact sheet from the United Nations Refugee Agency.
There are 12 refugee camps along the eastern border of Chad, which is adjacent to Sudan.
The inhabitants have lived there since about 2003 or 2004.
The effort to get a Viva World Cup team for the refugees started about a year ago, with California activist Gabriel Stauring.
Stauring runs the humanitarian organization i-ACT, which has several ongoing projects to help refugees from Darfur.
For example, i-ACT created a low-bandwidth social network that can easily be used on the unreliable Internet connection in Chad. The group also provides education and other help.
“They really have very little to cheer for,” Stauring said in a video on the Darfur United website. “One thing they do have is a love for soccer.”
So Stauring started working to put together a unified soccer team, pulling players from each of the 12 refugee camps spread across Chad.
“We’re making it happen to take them and participate in an international tournament, where they represent their people, everybody who is displaced,” Stauring said in the video. “They represent Darfur, and we get to tell the story of where they came from.”
Brian Cleveland
Cleveland grew up in Oxford and now lives in Seymour. He teaches seventh-grade social studies at Seymour Middle School, and coaches girls soccer at Seymour High School.
Cleveland has been interested in the conflict in Darfur for several years. Sudan is one of four countries his class focuses on during social studies lessons.
At Cleveland’s direction, Seymour Middle School started a sister-school project with one of the 12 refugee camps in Chad this year. The students raised $1,300 to help the school at Camp Goz Amer purchase supplies.
“From everything that I knew and had read about, and studied, I was thinking I was an expert, or nearly an expert on the topic (of Darfur),” Cleveland said. “Just feeling it and experiencing it was completely different from reading about it.
Cleveland got involved with the project after seeing a chance tweet that the team was looking for an assistant coach.
“I teach about Darfur, I coach soccer,” Cleveland recalls thinking. “If you need someone, it’s me.”
So Cleveland reached out to Stauring, and quickly gathered support from his school and family to leave the country for 11 days to help coach the team.
The Team
During his time at Camp Djabal, Cleveland worked with Darfur United coach Mark Hodson to pick 15 players, and five alternates, out of a pool of 60 refugees. They traveled with Stauring and a videographer, James Thacher.
They held two sessions of tryouts — one at 5:30 a.m., when the sun rose, and one at 5:30 p.m., when the sun started going down.
Cleveland said the players had no formal training, but picked up new skills quickly.
“Being a coach down there, it was just awesome to see,” he said. “We would do a few drills, then scrimmage. They would immediately apply what we were teaching. By the day we left, they were playing some really good soccer compared to when we first got there.”
“The most important thing is it gives them an outlet of joy,” Cleveland said. “Because there is not much to be joyful about over there.”
Now the challenge is raising enough money to buy plane tickets, uniforms and accommodations for the Viva World Cup tournament, scheduled to be held in Iraqi Kurdistan, Cleveland said.
More Info
Cleveland and his travel companions blogged and shot video during their short stay in Chad. You can read about their efforts on the Darfur United blog.
Click on the links below to see Cleveland’s posts:
A True Sacrifice, April 4
Tomorrow Has Come And Gone, April 3
What Will Tomorrow Bring?, April 2
Putting Things Into Perspective, April 1
A Pair of Cleats, March 30
Almost There, March 29
The following links give more information about Darfur United and the Viva World Cup.
“The World Cup For Everyone Else,” Wall Street Journal article
Darfur United Facebook Page
Interview with Gabriel Stauring, Athlebrities.com
