During the span of a 90-minute soccer match, 1800 children will die of preventable diseases and malnutrition.
The goal is to save kids …
Golden Goal is a global communication campaign and a sports media event organized around the practice of goal shooting skills for soccer. It will build media momentum and awareness for the FIFA World Cup 2006 and 2010, harvesting global communication coverage.
Golden Goal is a media campaign vehicle for corporate social responsibility. It will create a shooting skill arena, and a practice-oriented competitive game within the official rules of soccer. It will level the field for boys and girls at goal shooting practice. Shooting skills are measured, statistics are kept. A competitive practice oriented game is born. By bringing together football stars, local football figures, young aspiring players and civil authorities, the Golden Goal arenas are open practice fields on public grounds for all to use.
Complementary to the temporary event of the arenas, soccer academies sprout in critical neighborhoods to foster the practice of sports in youngsters at peril. From Berlin to Rio de Janeiro, to Buenos Aires, to Barcelona, to Los Angeles, to Moscow, to Seoul, to Manchester, to Madrid, to Cape Town …
The Golden Goal arenas become the backdrop and scenario for the sports media event and the academies. A synchronized advertisement campaign will create public awareness and assure global communication coverage. The installation of the Golden Goal arenas will become a sustainable symbol of the creation of social capital through the organized effort of corporations, communities and multilateral institutions. The soccer sports academies will remain and develop after the tournaments and their parallel campaigns. Local organizations, partnership players and foster parents take over the work of the academies. Some of the arenas may take on a different life according to their environment. Across the world.
"Childhood itself is difficult to preserve in a world beset, as this one is, by armed conflict, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Yet, UNICEF and FIFA believe that football can help rescue the part of childhood that includes the right to play. And as children gather to play football in villages and large cities, in wealthy and poor nations, they will share in a passion that unites people all over the world."
- UNICEF, 2004
Credit
A Company (Oliver Schütte, Marije van Lidth de Jeude) with ARCA/Walter Hidalgo for UNICEF.
San Jose, Costa Rica, 2004.