Overview of Initiative

The Sager Family Foundation partnered with the FC Unity Hope Tour to sponsor the Hope Tour Coaching/Mentor Roadshow. The program developed by FC Unity and the Sager Foundation brings together 100 community coaches for a 5-day coaching and refereeing clinic with both citizenship and mentorship training to help these football coaches broaden their role with their players from being merely technical coaches to being life coaches as well. The program would be implemented and managed by internationally accredited local professional coaches. The age group of these coaches will be between 19 and 25. Since we aim for these coaches to be working with players as mentors not as peers, the age group of the players will be teenagers, and 80% of the coaches should be 23 or older.

In addition to the mentoring clinic the program include a multi-community tournament organized by the coaches on the final day of the clinic, full kit for all coaches and participating teams, prizes in recognition of achievement, and the 10 most successful candidates will qualify for overseas coaching courses under the auspices of the Tony Blair Sports Foundation.

Why We Are Doing It

Iraq has been the champions of the Asian Cup since 2007. Winning the Asian Cup was the greatest single unifying event in post-conflict Iraq. The Hope Tour Coaching/Mentor Roadshow aims to build a responsible football culture upon these championship values as a nationwide cross-community grass-roots youth network.

The young community leaders will plan, organize and deliver their own football tournaments and sports activities reaching out to thousands of young people across Iraq. By learning to manage and run these events for themselves, the young leaders will hone their life-skills of the future.

Beyond the success hoped for with each of the initial clinics the program includes 3-6 months follow-up courses ensuring the coaches continue to properly implement the tenets learned. There are far reaching possibilities for this program as the model is going to be implemented in eight key provinces in Iraq.

How We Measure Success

The educational focus of the mentoring program will concentrate on five key areas:

1. Soccer Skills & Physical Education
   The coaching clinics will deliver physical education training and develop soccer skills within the culture of the team and help young people to understand fair play and foul play as a core ethos of the rules of the game.
2. Life Skills & Personal Development
   The coaching clinics will use teamwork and the experience of winning and losing to teach social responsibility, reciprocity and inclusion as part of training for life skills and personal development.
3. Civic Culture & Citizenship
   The coaching clinics will help young people in communities across Iraq learn about citizenship and civic culture through the practical experience of dealing with real issues in organizing tournaments, mini-leagues and working on joint projects with partner communities.
4. Cross Community Understanding
   The coaching clinics will aid post-conflict healing by nurturing cross-community respect and understanding and will give thousands of young Iraqis a chance to work together on shared projects that are entertaining as well as educational.
5. Mentor Training
   The coaching clinics will train the 100 community coaches to serve as effective mentors to the players they are coaching. This Mentor Training will be focused on teaching coaches how to be life coaches to their players through mentoring relationships, and it will provide the coaches with lesson plans on life skills they can use with their players.