From Founder Kona Shen -

When the earthquake hit in 2010, Leogane was at the epicenter. It is estimated that 80% of the town was destroyed. Every evening at dusk, children played soccer in the street surrounded by 40-foot-high piles of rubble that used to be their homes, schools, churches, and clinics.

I founded GOALS that same year with a grassroots mentality. Local communities would build long-lasting solutions based on the needs that they identified. Kids would have a dedicated program to play, eat, and learn. Soccer would serve as a catalyst for change, and we would help communities improve daily life with an emphasis on gender equality and local leadership.

Thanks to support from Paul Sorensen, GOALS launched quickly. I hired local leaders and we went door-to-door in a fishing village called Destra to sign up kids, conduct a needs assessment, and start a pilot program. I also attended UN-hosted reconstruction meetings, where I learned that no one else was trying to help the most remote communities in the area. Families in Destra literally were not on the map to receive food, soap, and other supplies.

Today, it’s astonishing to me what GOALS has achieved. Our grassroots approach can be a lot of work—it has taken the collective efforts of thousands of people to create the impact we’ve had in Haiti over the past ten years. GOALS has helped children and their parents learn to read and count through our literacy programs. We have helped decrease the teen pregnancy rate through sex education. We have hosted clinics where there are no doctors. We have sent children to school on scholarships. We have partnered with the Building Goodness Foundation to build permanent houses. We have sent our players to the national youth teams. We have received international awards recognizing our results, our model, and our commitment.

Of everything that our extended team has accomplished, I am most proud of the fact that we have stuck around. We have deep roots in the communities we serve, and our donors have demonstrated an incredible commitment to supporting long-term change.

As we look ahead to the next ten years, I am thinking about how climate change makes GOALS’ work increasingly urgent. Strengthening rural, coastal communities is imperative. Everyone is going to struggle with climate change, and it is up to GOALS to make sure that a village like Destra doesn’t fall through the cracks on those official maps once more.

Because we’re a grassroots organization, our team is still primarily Haitian. As a result, when the airports have shut down due to protests, storms have cut off rural communities, or the programs halted due to COVID-19, our coaches have still been able to distribute masks, soap, food, and information. The next ten years will see more of these challenges. Global warming will certainly worsen instability and inequality. As scary as that is, GOALS gives me hope every single day. Our approach makes us flexible, and that has helped us weather every storm in the past ten years. Being a grassroots organization hasn’t become any easier, but it has become GOALS’ greatest strength.