“Sí se puede” (Yes, we can) is what Fabio Ceballos said in 2021 when we first met with him and shared the idea of starting a soccer academy for kids who already loved soccer. This was an opportunity to create a community-centric safe space where kids 6-14 could learn about resources, talk about their challenges, support each other, and re-think and re-build self-confidence and an affirmative vision for themselves after COVID and the trauma we all experienced during that first terrible year of the pandemic.
Fabio, or “El Señor de las Ranas” (The Lord of the Frogs), as he is well known along Buford Highway, had already been leading soccer academies and camps for at least a decade in the area. When he was not driving his taxi, full of tiny frog figurines to entertain kids, he was recruiting and mentoring children and using soccer as a tool to strengthen and grow community.
A Safe Space Along Buford Highway
Four years later, 50 kids show up every summer for the “2-Gen Soccer & Wellbeing Academy.” Low-income. Resilient. Full of fire.
During those 4 hours, 4 days a week, their adults have the option to receive free health screenings, learn about their civil rights, where to find legal resources, what to do when our rental homes are falling apart, learn about how to prevent chronic conditions and ask questions about vaccines, their safety and learn tools for mindfulness and relaxation that are affordable and relevant to their lifestyles.
This year, the resources were more and varied, and we expanded access to the entire neighborhood, not just camp goers: vaccines, food, and workshops were available to all. The FIFA World Cup was being played just 20 minutes away. For many of our families, it might as well have been another galaxy. So we brought the World Cup to them. They created art and painted the flags of the countries their hearts belong to. They argued, passionately, about soccer stars. They asked big questions: What does it mean to be healthy? What does community mean to me?
The True Soccer Capital of the South
Long before Atlanta called itself the “Soccer Capital of the South,” Latino families were the ones building the leagues, funding the fields, and raising the players. Consistently and systematically in Dalton, Georgia, first, where a primarily Latino workforce arrived in the early 1980s and never left. Those families built something so powerful that the city was renamed “Soccer Town USA.” Since 2013, local high schools have won 17 state soccer championships. The celebrated stars of that community are Latino.
In Metro Atlanta, Latino and international leagues filled DeKalb County parks for decades, until gentrification priced them out of their own green spaces. The sport remained. The belonging got harder to hold.
Fútbol is not a hobby for our community. It is a language. A lineage. A way of saying: We are here, we belong, we built this.
Born From the Community
In 2021, Aceli, Lorena, and Cristina (who would go on to co-found Amigos de la Comunidad) sat in community conversations and heard the same worry over and over:
“We can’t afford summer camps. Our kids have nowhere safe to go. We’re losing work shifts we can’t afford to lose.”
They brought that call to us. We brought it to Fabio. The Ser Familia team joined, offering free mental health screenings and counseling from day one.
And a program was born from the voices of the people it was made to serve.
The “Soccer Capital of the South” was built on the experience, investment and love of many for the sports. Among them, and prominently, the Latino community, an integral and foundational part of the region’s evolution, its present and future.
We hope you enjoy the photos of this year’s program. Thank you to Kaiser Permanente, the The Atlanta United Community Fund and Soccer in the Streets for their belief in this work. Thank you We Love Buford Highway for joining us and to Amigos de la Comunidad for being the very best co-creators of this.
P.S. and… El Señor de las Ranas? He is still around, he says work is hard and scarce. People are afraid of going out even in his taxi.
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