America Scores uses soccer not only as a sport or physical activity, but also as a catalyst for building friendships and community and help students become more responsible and engaged in school. Here something about their work.

1. +
America scores:
helping people
through soccer,
poetry and
community service
By Yosef Meystel
Image courtesy of Jon Candy at Flickr.com

2. + If you take a good look at Chicago, it is a city where helping other
is extremely important and is part of their everyday life. It is
common to have a member of the family that works for a charity,
or a friend that is part of an organization that helps others. There
are many charities of many types that help communities, the
earth and the animals. This time we are going to take a look at
one very special charity that helps people, especially urban
youth, using soccer, writing and community service so they
can be somebody in the future, live a smooth and healthy life
and be highly engaged students to have the confidence and
character to make a difference in the world and help others.
Let’s first state that the way they achieve their goal is through
daily after school and summer activities and programs that
combine soccer, poetry, and service-learning. America Scores
has a holistic and team-based approach that targets student
who live below the poverty line, and makes everything possible
to improve their academic life, increase their physical fitness, and
have a greater sense of confidence and belonging to help others
and be somebody in the future no matter the circumstances.

3. + Their story started in the 1940s in Washington, D.C., when
Julie Kennedy, a public school teacher was very worried that her
students did not have the resources to do constructive activities
after school and that day by day they were exposed to gang
activity and other dangers the street offers. She had been an
athlete herself and used this experience to start teaching her
class soccer after school. When the weather did not help her,
she used her passion for poetry to teach her students how
to write and perform their poetry. She began to see that her
students were more engaged in class, performed better
academically, and spent more time being physically active. She
then added a service-learning element and designed a program
that was based on a student-led neighborhood service project,
where the students actively helped others in their neighborhoods.
The experiment was a success and the students started to
developed confidence and learned that they could make a big
change in their community. Soon after, many schools were
paying attention to what has happening and the program
expanded citywide. In 1999, America Score grew to be a
national organization.

4. + America Scores is aligned with the education system in the
United States, they are the only urban youth development
program with a curriculum specifically aligned with the twelve
Standards for English Language Arts (National Council of
Teachers of English), the six National Standards for Physical
Education (National Association for Sport and Physical
Education), and the eight K-12 Service-Learning Standards
(National Youth Leadership Council). This gives a special touch
to the programs because they are backed and supported by
standards that have been studied and approved by the
country and the community in general. A lot of people
approach the charity because they have these standards in
place, so apart from helping people, they are teaching their
children through educational programs that comply with the
standards of the educational system.

5. + Their numbers are amazing: they serve 10,000 youth and have
14 affiliate cities; they cover and take their programs to 175
urban elementary and middle schools; they have engaged and
trained over 650 public school teachers. Other amazing numbers
are the writing productions and the exercises statistics that their
children have: America Scores’ students write more than 20,000
original literary works each year, get 10 times more exercise than
the national average, provide 200,000 hours of volunteer work to
their communities, publish their work in magazines and participate in
spoken word events in front of audiences of hundreds of people.
Image courtesy of
Camron Flanders at Flickr.com

6. + In order to achieve their goal, they work based on 3 pillars
that are transversal to their work:
1. They create teams through the sport of soccer because it is a
universal and inclusive sport, accessible to all children
regardless of background and physical characteristics and
that creates a world of discipline much needed among
children and teenagers;
2. They take the teams to the classroom to discover their voice
through poetry because poetry, the charity thinks and knows,
transcends culture and language and helps children develop
creative thinking, literacy, and speaking skills.
3. They encourage community service in their teams and
members because community Service Learning helps
children develop empathy, social responsibility, and a sense
of personal worth. They are also convinced that as a team,
these ‘poet -athletes’ will learn to use their voices to make a
change in the communities around them
America Scores uses soccer not only as a sport or physical
activity, but also as a catalyst for building friendships and
community and help students become more responsible and
engaged in school.