‘Football has power’: how Arsenal are helping Syrian refugees in Jordan

Kim Little and her Arsenal teammate Leah Williamson are reflecting on the role football can play in changing lives. The pair have just left a close to hour-long Zoom call with women and girls in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, the world’s largest refugee camp for Syrians who have fled the war in their homeland.

“We play football and people watch us, but I think for us, as a club, as a team and as individuals, the societal impact is way more important,” Little says. “That’s more lasting past football. When we retire from playing it’s not just: ‘Oh, I played OK on the pitch, we did this, we won this.’ Imagine if we can look back in five or 10 years’ time, when I’m not playing, and can say we maybe had an impact on ordinary people’s lives to go and study law or travel? I’d take that any day over winning trophies.”

On Zoom on International Women’s Day were two junior coaches, 16-year-old Nada and 17-year-old Sondos, a 42-year-old mother of five and coach, Salma, and 12-year-old Reem. All are a part of the Coaching for Life programme co-created by The Arsenal Foundation and Save the Children that is in its seventh 20-week cycle.

“I used to live in Bloudan, a village near Damascus,” Salma says. “As the situation got worse there, I moved to Daraa in 2012 but it was still dangerous. In Daraa, a sniper shot my 16-year-old son and he died from the injury five days later. I fled Syria with my then husband and children and arrived at the Za’atari refugee camp in 2013.”

Nada arrived with her three sisters and one brother in 2014; Sondos in 2012 with 10 family members and joined Coaching for Life with her 16-year-old divorced sister; Reem came aged two, brought by her parents with her three sisters and brother.

Life in the camp