There are only a few seconds left on the clock as the Indian goal-keeper throws it forward. The number 12 jinks this way and that, evading opposition players like a moped evading potholes, before planting a strong shot in the top left corner of the goal. The whistle blows, the audience roars, and India lifts the World Cup!

The men sit at rank 31 and the women at a heady rank 5, both being all-time highs. But they need your support to get there! , the official Indian partner of the , has launched a fundraising campaign to help the Indian teams reach the Homeless World Cup.

About the Homeless World Cup

There’s something wonderfully primal, instinctive, and liberating in kicking a ball around. Whatever troubles beset you otherwise, whatever inequities and hardships rear their ugly heads during waking hours, however trampled you are by the relentless stampede of life, you can be forgiven for relegating those thoughts to the back of your mind in those few seconds with the ball. It’s an exercise where there are no institutionalized inequities; you are as good as you are. It’s an activity where team-play is preeminent, forcing you to think beyond lines of gender, income, and social status. Most of all, it’s a means to catharsis, something that helps you better tackle those very hardships and troubles that have hitherto ravaged your confidence and self-belief.

This is the defining emotion behind the . Founded by Mel Young and Harald Schmied in 2001, the Homeless World Cup is an annual football tournament that advocates for a global solution to homelessness and helps its participants untie the social albatrosses on their necks. With partners in more than 70 countries, the competition touches the lives of 100,000 homeless people every year through experience sharing and an infusion of respect and importance that their lives have lacked so far.

India is a country with massive problems of homelessness, and has been a partner of the Homeless World Cup since 2007. Both men and women teams have consistently participated in the competition over the years; their stocks have risen inexorably and so has their general popularity among other teams.

This video encapsulates the sentiment behind the Homeless World Cup and the Indian teams’ rising popularity:

About Slum Soccer: Slum Soccer is a 15-year-old sports-for-development organization that uses football as a tool for social upliftment for underserved classes of society. They work with recovering drug addicts, recovering alcoholics, slum dwellers, street children, juvenile delinquents, and children of commercial sex workers, and impact the lives of 12,000 children every year. Slum Soccer has been the official Indian partner of the Homeless World Cup since 2006.