Enoch Trindade, 54, checks the names of the boys who enter the field. See if they are on your spreadsheet. The last of them has his head down. He looks embarrassed.
“Where have you been? Why haven’t you come more?”, asked the teacher.
In an almost whispered voice, the boy explains that he had “personal problems”. The mother had no way of warning and the grandmother, who usually passes through the neighborhood, also did not.
“Have you solved these problems?”
The student shakes his head. Yup.
“Life is made of obstacles. We are here to overcome them and not hide from them. If anything happens, come to us”, asks the instructor of the soccer school.
To call the Elias Project, in Parque Vila Maria, in the north of São Paulo, a little school is to reduce it to much less than it really is. And that teenagers like Wallace Keysutone, 15, and Cainã Lellis da Silva, 16, soon discovered. They are two of the young people who are part of the project’s partnership with the NGO Educ360º, which offers a programming course for games.
Wallace has already finished classes and has aroused interest from companies with which the entity has agreements. Due to school hours it was not possible to be hired yet. He became Educ360º’s backup monitor and instructor in the meantime. Cainã stood out in the programming but, like almost all the other members of the school in that poor community, he has another dream.
“I still want to be a football player. But it’s good to know that I have another possibility. I also started to learn English because of that. Being something related to games caught my attention. I like to play”, he explains.
The objective of Educ360º is to train and provide opportunities for people of any age who wish to learn, but just like the Elias Project soccer school, it goes beyond that. He wants to open the eyes of those who never imagined having a real opportunity to ascend socially. It offers education as the tool.
“We always tell them: programming can be learned on YouTube. This is about you”, says Fabio Carmo, the entity’s CEO.
He begins to list the stories that have passed through the classes of online or face-to-face classes. The most famous case is that of a teenager who grew up a few meters from Cracolândia, in the capital, and stood out so much that he was disputed by five different companies.
There is another one who, to follow the course, borrowed a friend’s notebook and went to a small bakery on the corner of his house because there was wifi signal there. Only then could he attend classes.
“We make it clear to them that the course exists. We basically say: we know that you dream of being soccer players. But if you want, we are here; It’s a matter of wanting to”, he adds.
It was the opportunity that Wallace seized, but he is an exception. He always liked technology more than football. The course was what attracted him as soon as his grandfather passed in front of the Elias Project and saw a poster advertising the classes.
“I just didn’t know that programming a game was so much work. Before that, all I did was help my parents, sell candy on the street…”, he explains.
Programming takes as much work as what is perhaps his greatest passion: music. After he started the course at the NGO, he started to learn to play the violin in a church in Parque Novo Mundo, also in the north of the capital. He worked so hard that he even got an instrument as a gift.
What will happen in the lives of the boys who attend the project is a concern of Enoque, an ex-back with a discreet career in clubs in the countryside and Elias’s uncle, a midfielder who played for Corinthians and the Brazilian national team. It gives its name to the complex that also offers a library, courses, capoeira classes and physical activities for the elderly.
Elias had a notebook in which he used to write the phrase “I want to be a football player like my uncle”. She worked for him. Very right. But Enoque knows that turning pro is something that won’t happen to almost everyone who goes through the preschool. Perhaps none can. They need a plan B. As much as they don’t want to.
“It’s not just football here. We have to pay attention to everything and notice if there’s anything different about the boy. Sometimes he comes home and there’s no breakfast at home. We have to arrange something. And I talk about everything with them. About girlfriends, condom use, health issues. It’s a relationship of trust that we create”, he concludes.
For those involved in the project and for Carmo, the boys’ best opportunity is in the programming course. It means a real chance in the job market, in an expanding and constantly changing profession. Educ360º was sought out by Facebook for projects involving augmented reality.
“It broadened my horizons. I never thought about it before. Now I know that this possibility exists, but I still think about football”, admits Cainã.
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