One World Futbol, Saving Childhood One Goal at A Time

This new, relatively indestructible soccer ball may save children who are at risk of literally losing their childhood to political violence, natural disasters, poverty or all of the above. The One World Futbol, conceived by entrepreneur Tim Jahnigen and financed and championed by Sting, is made out of the same material as Crocs. 

Mr. Jahnigen learned that children were fashioning soccer balls out of string and garbage (or just kicking around plastic bottles) after real soccer balls donated by relief organizations popped on the makeshift rubble-strewn fields of refugee camps and other war or disaster torn areas.

He vowed to make a soccer ball as tough as the children who wanted to play despite their abominable living conditions. After testing prototypes under extreme conditions--by children living in a refugee camp for former child soldiers and a soccer-ball-loving lion at the Johannesburg zoo--the One World Futbol was ready to go.The One World Futbol was tested for toughness by this lion at the Johannesburg Zoo.

There are still some obstacles--most notably manufacturing and shipping costs--but 33,000 Futbols (carried by all sorts of "fairy godparents" including Doctors Without Boarders docs, flight attendants and a U.S. Army colonel) are already on playing fields in places like Afghanistan, Haiti and Iraq; allowing kids to worry--if only for 90 minutes--about how to make a goal rather than how to survive.

Read more at nytimes.com