Samba Soccer Schools

Aim

Help us empower more children and offer disadvantaged young people jobs through our professional brand of Brazilian soccer schools.

Who are we?

Samba Soccer Schools has been running for just over two years. The soccer schools was created after identifying there was far too much pressure placed on children in grassroots football. Parents yell, coaches screech causing children to loose confidence and self-esteem. Samba Soccer Schools bring back the excitement in children's football by allowing children to play without the fear of making mistakes.

Our soccer schools have a threefold purpose. The first is football; to teach children how to play with the flair and freedom that epitomises the Brazilian game. The second, is social development. By using football as the vehicle, we aim to instil confidence, knowledge and joy in players. And the third is to create amazing footballing memories for children. This is achieved through our unique blend of samba music, size 2 weighted footballs, and storytelling, given children a truly memorable experience of grassroots football.

In our two years of operation, our passion for creating fun and exciting ways of coaching children has never changed. Our courses are carefully designed by our team of professional coaches and delivered by our trained and qualified staff. We have had the support and recognition of local MP’s and Brazilian footballing superstars such as Neymar Jr and Oscar.

The schools were founded by former Sociology graduate from the London School of Economics, Nilio Bagga.

How do we help young people?

Samba Soccer Schools (SSS) teaches London-based children, aged 5 to 11, how to play football the Brazilian way, using our unique coaching methodology and training techniques.

We have weekly centres running in 6 local communities across London offering our service to children between the ages of 4 and 11 from all backgrounds. These sites include, Shepherds Bush, Kings Cross, Marylebone, Battersea, Southfields and Chelsea.

We also run free classes over children’s half-term and summer holidays for local children in an effort to encourage them into football.  Our programmes have had the effect of tackling the below social problems:

1. Marginalisation:  Through offering all inclusive programmes for children from all backgrounds regardless of ability
2. Economic deprivation: Through offering free classes where possible
3. Health and Fitness: We encourage parents to limit the time their children spend on computer games etc and more time spent outdoors on the pitch exercising
4. Confidence: We teach very specific skills and encourage children to use them in small-sided games. This raises children's confidence both on and off the pitch.
5.  Cultural Deprivation:  Our programmes offer literacry and numeracy workshops together with a knowledge of Brazil including it's history, geography, music and language.

Rising Coach

Together with our weekly soccer schools, Samba Soccer deliver workshops for young budding coaches to offer them the opportunity to get into volunteering and paid work. The programme is called ‘Rising Coach’ and is offered to young people between the age of 16 and 25. This programme teaches predominantly NEETs and students from local colleges how to coach through theory and practice and provides experience at our weekly centres. The course also shows these students how to gain their badges and qualifications allowing them to enter the industry with a view to offer the best candidates paid positions in the future. 

Why are we crowdfunding?

Samba Soccer Schools would like to expand our reach to more children and young people from all backgrounds across London. In order to do so we require capital to open more centres. Your support can help us to open a further 4-6 centres within the space of a 12 month period. The funds would be used for the following:

1. Purchase of equipment
2. Recruit qualified coaches
3. Training of coaches
4. Venue costs
5. Marketing costs
6. Kit Costs

We would also like to expand our ‘Rising Coach’ programme to more disadvantaged young people to give them the tools and opportunity to succeed in the world of football coaching. This will also allow us to promote the best 'risers' and fund the coaching courses and training.

This project closed unsuccessfully on 14th December 2016