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When communities marked World Football Day on May 25, they celebrated the world’s most popular sport and its power to bring people together. But football matters on local pitches too, where young people can meet people who believe in them and start to see new possibilities for themselves.
Through Futures in Motion, Beyond Sport and New Balance Foundation are supporting community organizations that use sport to help young people feel included, build relationships and develop skills for future employability. Grounded in Positive Youth Development (PYD), the program empowers young people to take an active role in their own growth. Two of them are bringing that work to life through football.
In Japan, the nonprofit arm of women’s football club Yamato Sylphid Sports Club (Yamato Sylphid) gives girls a chance to play, talk and spend time with senior women’s team players and academy members who show them what staying in the game looks like. In Poland, WĘDKA Association opens up football to young people who may not always feel welcome in organized sport and creates chances for them to take on leadership in their own community.
Building a city of women’s football in Japan
In Yamato City, football has a special place in the community.
Yamato Sylphid’s roots stretch back to 1998, when local girls needed a place to keep playing after elementary school and parents helped establish a team for young teen girls.
Since Nadeshiko Japan, Japan’s women’s national football team, won the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2011, Yamato City has embraced its identity as “the city of women’s football.” Yamato Sylphid has been part of that story for more than ten years, serving as a hometown team and community presence.
As they put it, “Although the club is still growing, as a community-based club, we hope to be part of people’s everyday lives and a place where they feel they belong. Not only through competition, but also through our presence in the local community.”
That sense of belonging shapes the club’s Futures in Motion-supported Empowerment Project. The project works with elementary school girls through football, play and conversation so they can build confidence and imagine more for themselves.
For Yamato Sylphid, football is not simply about winning or losing. It gives young people a way to express themselves, connect with others and build confidence. That matters especially for girls, who often move away from sport as they grow older.
Those early experiences can matter. As the club explained, moments like “I was able to do it” or “I made friends” help children feel more hopeful about what comes next.
Through the project, children play football, take part in activities and have space to share what they think and feel. They also connect with Yamato Sylphid senior players and academy members.
The project creates moments where children begin to think, “I want to try this.”
Role models close enough to reach
Yamato Sylphid’s academy players play an important role in that process.
For children, learning from players closer to their own age can make the possibility of playing past elementary school feel more real. These are not distant athletes on a screen. They are people from the same community, standing beside them on the pitch.
“Academy players who are close in age can serve as very relatable role models for children,” the club explained. “Having someone nearby who makes them feel, ‘Maybe I can do this too,’ is incredibly meaningful.”
The academy players grow through the experience too. In working with children, they get to practice communication, build leadership and begin to take on more responsibility.
That pathway is already prominent in the club’s own history. For them, it is especially meaningful when Sylphid graduates return as top team players or come back as coaches.
Those returns show how football can keep young people connected to the role models and communities that helped shape them.
Yamato Sylphid also knows that not every young person has the same chance to play. For girls in particular, sport participation often drops as they get older. Some girls may lack confidence, feel unsure about joining or look around and see few other girls playing. The club also sees a need for more easy-to-access opportunities and more chances for girls to meet women and older girls who play.
The Empowerment Project aims to change that. It is beginning to take shape, with Yamato Sylphid planning small-group sessions for elementary school students two to three times a year. The format gives children room to play, talk and build trust with the older players leading them. It also keeps the work rooted in the community, where girls can see women and older girls playing, leading and making football feel like a place for them too.
“Through sport, we hope to help create a society where children can take on challenges more freely. Rather than having their possibilities limited because they are ‘girls’ or because they ‘lack experience,’ we want to build a community environment where everyone can challenge themselves in their own way.”
– Yamato Sylphid Sports Club
Football for everyone in Poland
In Toruń, Poland, WĘDKA Association also uses football to give young people a place to connect, participate and grow.
Through its Futures in Motion-supported Football for Everyone project, known locally as PDK, WĘDKA brings football directly to young people in housing estates and neighborhood spaces, including areas where free, safe activities are hard to access. For the organization, a ball on a concrete pitch can send a simple message to local children: something is happening here, we are here for you and this space belongs to you.
For WĘDKA, “Football is much more than a sport; it is our universal language and an incredible bridge between generations.”
That hyper local presence matters because young people in this community are often navigating much more than a lack of sports opportunities. WĘDKA works in communities where the pull of street-based groups and violent fan cultures can be strong, especially for young people looking for belonging, identity and protection. These groups can draw them in by offering structure, loyalty and a sense of power, while ultimately exposing them to aggression, rivalry and harm.
PDK offers a different path.
Instead of asking young people to prove themselves through conflict, PDK offers what it calls a “Safe Base”: a steady place to return to, with adults who know their names, ask how their day was and show up week after week. Where harmful groups build belonging through fear or opposition, PDK builds it through trust, care and consistency.
For participants, football becomes the entry point. The relationship is the deeper work.
That philosophy comes through in one of PDK’s clearest promises: “We have no substitute benches and no rejects—no matter how well you kick the ball, here you are accepted, important, and heard.”
That approach shapes how the project opens football to everyone. Sessions are free, equipment is provided and coaches meet young people where they already are: on neighborhood pitches, in courtyards and in public spaces. WĘDKA currently supports around 70 children each week across Toruń and the surrounding area, with regular sessions in five locations and plans to expand to more PDK spots this year. Participants are primarily aged 8 to 17, while young adults up to age 26 can take part through the Junior Coach pathway.
From player to leader
WĘDKA describes that pathway simply: from player to leader.
Through the Junior Coach program, young people ages 16 to 26 assist with youth training sessions and also take part in micro-training sessions to build responsibility and confidence in the role. and learn responsibility by doing. Through the Youth Council, they help shape the project itself, from tournament schedules to the themes discussed during classes.
This is where football starts to become more than a session on the calendar. Young people who may have once stood at the edge of the pitch begin to step into visible roles.
The team pointed to Amelia and Wiktoria, two young female leaders who first watched from the sidelines. Over time, they began helping coaches set up goals and cones. Then they led a warm-up for the whole group. Today, they mentor younger participants on the pitch.
Another example came through a “Social Sparring” match between young people and probation officers, where football shifted how participants saw themselves and how others saw them. In everyday life, these young people may be viewed through their challenges. On the pitch, cheered on by a crowd, they became athletes representing their team.
“Suddenly they were not ‘problem children,’ but real athletes representing their team with their heads held high.”
– WĘDKA Association
Beyond football sessions, PDK also builds community through shared meals, cultural outings, workshops and conversations with mentors. The pitch may be where young people first show up, but WĘDKA sees the biggest opportunity in what happens around it: eating together, talking about emotions, getting help with schoolwork and spending time in a safe, welcoming group.
Or, as the organization put it: “In PDK, we do not train footballers—we support people.”
A shared game, local meaning
Both organizations offer local examples of what the global game means close to home.
In Yamato City, football provides girls with visible role models at home, helping them imagine new possibilities for themselves. In Toruń, football gives young people a place to belong, build relationships and grow into leadership.
Their contexts are different, but they share a simple idea: when football grows from the community around it, it can open doors. For a girl in Japan, that means seeing an older player and knowing she can keep playing, even as pressures around her build. For a young person in Poland, it might mean finding a place where they are expected to show up consistently and someone believes they have something to offer.
As the team in Yamato put it, the hope is that sport will continue to grow “not only as competition, but as a culture that connects people and communities.”
Learn more about Futures in Motion.
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