About
OA Projects (OA), (OA = Opportunitas Aequa, Latin for “Equal Opportunity”) is a grassroots organization that uses soccer to build stronger communities for war-affected youth. OA’s objective is to increase opportunities for youth in war-affected regions to participate in soccer-based community building activities.
OA was created in 2006 by Canadian students who wanted to use soccer to help children robbed of their childhoods. The concept was inspired by a passage in a book by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire (Rtd) about his time serving the UN in Rwanda during the Genocide that described a group of children who, amidst violent chaos, temporarily escaped the horror surrounding them by playing soccer with a clump of banana leaves.
Since 2006, OA has completed two overseas projects - Ecuador (2007), Rwanda (2008) — and is increasing its program in northern Uganda (2009 - cont.). The combined impact of these activities has reached more than 10,000 children and youth in over 25 communities.
OA has created a project model and a set of values that reflect what we have learned through these projects, through interactions with the communities we work in and through interactions with other development work professionals.
At the most basic level, OA Projects supports existing local peacebuilding programs to strengthen and expand their soccer-based activities. We focus on identifying and then supporting local groups and relationships that exist and are working towards rebuilding their community. We do this because we believe that local organizations will have the greatest impact and will be the most efficient. In every community OA has worked in, there were numerous local organizations who were working hard to rebuild their communities. Our place is to support the improvement of those efforts, not to replace these organizations or impose a new solution. When it comes to implementing activities in the field, almost all coaches, youth leaders, administrators and project managers are local community members who have the specific skills necessary to deal with the complexities of community- and peacebuilding.
Our basic values shape how we do our work:
Participation - we work with local partners who already use soccer to promote community building. The youth leaders, peer counselors, and groups in the communities we work in are the experts in what they need and what will work best for them so projects are designed with our local partners and implemented mostly by members of the local partner organizations.
Transparency – we want people to be able to follow their support from the internet to the ground. Through blogging, videos, photos, and traditional monitoring reports, we are willing to show exactly how your support was used, what worked, what was learned and what was achieved.
Sustainability – we want our program to continue even if we are not physically still in the community. We want to help enhance local networks rather than impose structures from the outside. In addition, we take environmental issues very seriously and have committed to pursuing environmentally positive techniques in our project.
Action – in all that we do, everyone involved in the projects are actors who are capable of changing their own community’s outcomes and the world for the better. No one is a passive victim waiting for a handout; everyone has the potential to take action and we do our best to encourage, support and share stories of action.
Improvement – we are constantly seeking to improve our projects and our own capacity. This means that we will continually seek out new information about what has worked for others, new techniques, and new insights. Peace and community building is a complicated and nuanced process. OA realizes that we will always have more to learn and so we will keep learning. We recognize that there will always be room for improvement.
Passion – we all love what we do and that is what keeps us motivated.
Working closely with the Youth Coalition for Peace (a local, youth-led organization), we are currently empowering the expansion and maintenance of a local network of soccer-based peacebuilding in northern Uganda. The network connects war-affected youth with local youth leaders to play soccer and address issues related to peacebuilding and gender equity.
** Our official registration name is Equal Opportunity Society (easier to spell, pronounce, etc.) and we are a charitable organization, registered with the Canada Revenue Agency (BN# 83605 8693 RR0001)
sss
Our Mission
To be the low-cost, high-impact grassroots organization using soccer to empower youth in communities affected by war.
sss
Meet the Team
OA was created by students from around Canada. Since then the team has grown into a community of volunteers, subscribers and donors . Meet the core of team here.
To read about the caring people on our advisory board, please click here: Advisory Board Members
