Coinciding with the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on September 19, teams of inspiring women from across the globe will travel to the home of the UN Headquarters in New York to compete for the Global Goals World Cup Activist Trophy.
24 teams from 5 continents will convene at Greenpoint in Brooklyn to take part in the Five-a-Side street soccer tournament. It provides a platform to showcase the power of sport in connecting girls and women from around the world, and also to take action on the 17 UN Global Development Goals.
To qualify, each team has led a campaign of advocacy and action for their favourite UN Global Goal, and they compete by a unique set of rules that decides games based on action, mobilization, style and soccer skills.
Prior to the tournament, each team decides which Global Goal to play for e.g. Quality Education or Climate Action. They then take action on their chosen goal by organizing a fundraising event at a local school or hosting a climate change demonstration for example. Therefore, soccer performance alone does not determine which team eventually wins the World Cup.
Teams taking part include women from GANNI, Maternity Foundation, Moving the Goal Posts (Winners from the recent Nairobi tournament), In Style Magazine, BIG Architects, Karla Morales Foundation of Ecuador, and many others. The Global Goals World Cup tournaments aim to embrace the intersection between fashion, art, development policy and sport. This happens through the diversity of the teams and the unique partnerships.
A host of politicians, artists, journalists, DJs, and celebrity referees are also invited each year to observe the fast-paced matches and other entertainment at the venue. This year, Game of Thrones actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee from Uganda, Victor Ochen will be just some of the guest referees overseeing the day’s action.
This year’s event is hosted in partnership with Danish sports organisation Eir Soccer, UNDP, The Permanent Mission of Denmark to the UN, Save the Children, GAIN and the NYC Mayors Office for International Affairs.
With its partners, the Global Goals World Cup is on a mission to create a new type of tournament, built around unusual multi-sector alliances, driven by a passionate core team of women and men who want to expand the common notion of what a sport event looks like, who participates, and what kind of message it sends. The World Cup aims to become the inclusive space where amateur women from all over the world meet, play and change the world.