In soccer, a game plan for life
With hundreds of thousands of soccer fans flocking to Brazil for the World Cup, Harvard students and alumni are quietly working in some of the nation’s most underserved communities to use the sport to help change children’s lives. Melanie Baskind ’12 enters Harvard Medical School this fall, and will no doubt return full of ideas about the ways soccer can make a difference to young people. As part of Coaches Across Continents (CAC), Baskind is spending three weeks in Brazilian favelas showing coaches and community leaders how to teach students important life lessons with help from a soccer ball. “It is a true example of sport for development,” she said. The nonprofit is the brainchild of Nick Gates ’91, a former England youth national team player, Harvard soccer standout, and executive for Middlesbrough Football Club. Trekking around the globe in 2001, Gates was struck by the idea of using the sport he loved to...