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hi this is Mike you same I'm on the faculty here at the Wharton School and I
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have the privilege today of sitting down with Mary McVeigh who is the co-founder
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of soccer Without Borders and we're going to be talking next few minutes about that sport and Mary's building of
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a worldwide network of people who work with young people with women in some countries those who are refugees to help
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them through soccer keep their feet on the ground and get forward in life so Mary great to have you here in the
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studio thanks for having me look forward to our dialogue let's just start there
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maybe a little bit with you I think you went to Dartmouth College played soccer there even turn pro for a while so
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you've got a soccer career behind you yourself I do I've played soccer since I
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was four I still play very recreationally ambassador but I've just been very fortunate to have had the
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chance to you know have that be a part of my life and opportunities just kept kept coming I guess and I've I've built
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a network of friendships and great coaches that have really shaped me and reshaped the outcome of my life well
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that's great and most people when they play a collegiate sport that at that time in their lives when college is
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finished they are finished with the sport those who turn pro usually by age 22 or 23 or they're out of the NBA or
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NFL but you've managed to keep your your feet in the sport so to speak even as
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you left professional playing yourself and in forming this organization it's
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got a great title a great name for its soccer without borders this really is a cause driven agenda here so give us the
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a little bit about the mission of your organization and why you got it going you're the co-founder so why did you do
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this so soccer is one of the world's few universal languages and that that can be
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really powerful I mean you think about a world cup and how many people that brings together how many people watch
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how many people are passionate about it and so the idea is how do you use that to influence positive change how do you
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use that to motivate kids to reach their potential how do you use that to build bridges across racial economic
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cultural religious divides and really bring people together and build something positive so that was kind of
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the idea when we set out was it was how do we use this sport that has has a lot of really important interpersonal
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lessons that you can draw on to build character to build skills but then also to build community and you know we've
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been exploring that now for 10 years and and wouldn't say we've got it perfectly
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right but we're doing something good and you know the model has been working it's
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been applied in a lot of different contexts and we're excited to keep innovating and and keep finding a way to
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use this universal language for positive outcomes where I know you've got an
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office in Cambridge Massachusetts that's where it all kind of comes from these
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days and you got four or five hundred volunteers around the world working with you on this but let's make it more
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personal fly with you down to Nicaragua maybe drive an hour outside of the capital
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there to a small town that's called Granada after the Spanish town by the same name
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different from the island of Grenada which has a certain history that we're probably mostly familiar with you're you
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arrived you probably got there by bus and just let's make it a start okay not
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even if I said you wish it had been a bus so you're you pop out of the back of
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a pickup truck and then what you know our goal when I first went to Grenada was to find a way to to give access to
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this amazing sport to girls and that's something that was really not done there
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was there were so many levels of boys soccer and boys sports particularly baseball and soccer that had been built
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at the time there was boys leagues from under ten all the way up to premier league professional but on the women's
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side it was it was virtually non-existent and there's a lot of cultural economic reasons why that was
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so so the first I would say the first memory that I have of really seeing what this could do is you know we started
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doing soccer clinics and schools around Grenada and I was joined by my friend and cook who's now the associate head
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coach Penn State and we on our way home from from work that day we came across a
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pickup game there were six men playing three versus three literally under like a streetlight and it was nine or ten
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o'clock at night maybe a little later and you couldn't resist and we couldn't
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resist so it was - two of us women and then our friendship a who was Nicaraguan who had been helping us build the
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program and so we had three we had enough to play and so he you know he asked could we could we play winner and
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they literally just looked at us and and laughed and yeah they had no idea that an cook was a Hermann Trophy finalist
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played in the WUSA she's she's amazing you were all-american yourself I could
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try to hold my own and so we played in and it was a typical style you know you score you stay and we won nine games in
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a row and you could see at first it was you know who are these women and then it
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was you know they're there they're joking with each other oh she beat you
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and they were embarrassed and then by the end it was just we were just another team common ground and that that was
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when I knew that you know this this could change people's perspective they didn't need to be embarrassed about
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losing to women it was just they're good players and they could see us that way
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really interesting point too because in this case you're playing against them
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but nonetheless you bridged across a divide by playing against them the common ground was the game of soccer and
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it's about getting people to see each other for their for who they are for their talents not by you know some
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stereotype or some perception of what their limits are and getting people themselves to see that to you know have
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hoping the girls see you can be anything you want to be you know it's not just
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what society tells you your limits are so merry when you are there maybe the next day after this game you are a
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startup that you've arrived you might have a few contacts there but you don't
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have a team you don't have women out there girls out there playing yeah so take us through the first couple months
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when you had literally nothing and you had to build something it's really about
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making contacts and figuring out who who are champions on the ground so it wasn't
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about us being able you know me being able to go home and do from afar it was who are people here
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that believe in the same mission so the one of the first things we did was a joined men's team since there was no
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women's team and a lot of the men on that team are became coaches of ours we
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also managed to find the handful of women that had kind of challenged tradition and we're playing and roped
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them in to become coaches and then literally went door to door or school to school to school inviting girls to play
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and you know you do little clinics and show them they think they can't play you
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you watch them go through this transformation of I can't do that that's not for me and then oh I can you know I
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can get to juggles or I can make that pass um and and they get hooked because it's something exciting it's new there's
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an adult that's interested in me and and my skills and I feel positive and and we
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were able to to bring girls into the fold that way and get something started that could sustain all people doing
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startups say they have some great days and they have some really tough ones so what we're one or two your setbacks
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along the way there there have been many I think one that stands out since we're
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talking about Nicaragua finding finding your own limits of what you can and can't do you know these the challenges
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of of poverty and of equality that they're very complex and you can only provide so many services and so many
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resources so we had this one girl yelled uh who lived right next to the one soccer field in town so she was one of
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those women she had grown up playing with boys and she came out to our practice and she was talented and you
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know we are lies lit up and saying you know we're not here to be professional
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players but you know this girl clearly has a passion for it I'm so through the
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program she ended up playing for the under-21 national team which was very disorganized at the time but you know
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existed a huge breakthrough resource but just the complexity of the need she had
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you know her parents were really upset that she made the national team it was a Managua meant she she couldn't do as
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many chores around the house you know who's gonna pick up that slack the the national team was paying for her
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bus fare which they would oftentimes steal you know if you're gonna have this
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resource why should it be used for sport that's crazy it was just very complicated health issues you know
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somebody who's coming from a background that that she had her nutritional needs
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hadn't been met so playing at a higher level could her body handle that so it
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just sort of took us down a road of you know can we be a school and a hospital and a counselor and all of these things
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you know what's the limits of what we can do and the answer was yes and the answer was was actually no you know she
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ended up not being able to to bridge that for her at times it took up you know all of our focus was on this one
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girl we realized when there were so many others that were in the program you can't you how many resources can you
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devote to one person so it was really a gut check of what can we do what can we do well what are the limits and when
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when do you need to let someone go if you can't meet the needs that that they
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have I think that lesson always replays for me it's recognizing what you can and
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can't do and making sure the things you do you do choose to do that you can sustain them and do them well you know
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it's like a lot of people getting anything going they've got a vision or
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where they want to go but the actual model of how to do it you gotta kind of event by doing and learning and two
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steps forward and one step back so that was you you ready to reference the title
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of your organization no soccer Without Borders so help us understand what you mean by Without Borders I'm you know I
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think it speaks to the universality of the game and it also speaks to breaking down barriers it's it's about how do we
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erase some barriers that that exist in in the world for based on different circumstances so one of our major focus
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areas right now is on the newcomer population refugees asylees immigrants and you know literally borders comes to
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mind when you think about that and you think about people who have our stateless have lost their home have been
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you know forced to flee war persecution violence and you know how can you help them rebuild home
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in a new place and soccer can soccer is a pretty powerful tool in that in that effort make make the connections so we
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let's take refugees and maybe Turkey these days or Greece or or Nicaragua there are a couple million people
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traveling by foot today as we speak as we well know and as they come into a team they build at least a relationship
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with the coaches and parents and so on but then how does this bridge into something bigger than soccer itself so I
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mean you you hit the nail on the head there the family and support of team is incredibly powerful and the the mentor
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mentee relationship that's formed with the coach but then there's there's other
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concrete skills and resources that kids need in order to access opportunities and pathways particularly in the u.s.
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you know how do you fill out a FAFSA form how do you do you know to take the SAT are you prepared for the SAT what
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sort of interview skills do you have are you comfortable talking you know talking
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with somebody in presenting presenting yourself in a way that could help get you a job you know these are all very
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hard skills that kids need to practice and coming from a number of different cultural backgrounds interrupted
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schooling you know they may not have had sort of a pathway that's very consistent
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that builds up to a job or school higher education so we're you know trying to
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fill in those gaps I bet one of our one of my peers in this work I just thought had a great analogy the
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other day said it's like Swiss cheese there's a lot of holes and they're not
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all in the same place and so you're trying to plug them it's not about a a
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consistent model that's going to work for everybody it's about the model
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that's flexible enough to identify the holes and provide the resources to fill
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them you know I think historically the US Peace Corps often sent people who would become coaches and developing
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areas as well and the model that you're doing or offering up now is not unlike I
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think what the Peace Corps has done historically which is to help people through an initial engagement in a
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sporting activity could be badminton could be soccer could be baseball in some areas
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but it's baseball plus or it's soccer plus let's think about the plus and how
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do you after you've got a team maybe even a winning team yeah how do you help
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say the girls and Nicaragua then take the next step and putting their future together
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so one thing we do is is try to identify what are what are the obstacles are the
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pitfalls that exist what are the challenges that they're gonna face you know in Nicaragua some of the research
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would tell you that you're twenty eight percent of girls are pregnant by the
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time they're 18 that's a challenge fifty-two percent of kids don't make it
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on to secondary school that's a challenge so you can identify what are sort of the common pitfalls and how can
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we shape our program to address this so one thing in Nicaragua we offer is in sixth grade we want to bridge that
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transition into secondary school so starting in sixth grade we offer we call half scholarships public school in
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Nicaragua is not free there's there's uniforms there's a small matriculation fee so can
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we provide that the girls come when they come to an activity they are at a point
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they can use those points to purchase school uniforms and school supplies and then in secondary school we offer full
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scholarships which they can actually if they earn it through the program positive participation there's an
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application that we help with they can actually choose any secondary school they want and and we pay for it
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so we're identifying that this is this is a period of life where they can go
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one of two directions how can we intervene and make sure it's a positive path so it's I think that's how you know
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the Peace Corps has some very concrete areas that they focus on and people are trained for and I think what we try to
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do is similarly understand the culture and context that we're working in and
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make sure that we shape the program to meet those specific needs as I think about the girls say who are hopefully
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heading towards high school or beyond and Nicaragua I'm thinking they're
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residential that are there their families live there when it comes to people on the immigrant trail they're
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often not there that long families have been broken up so a much more difficult population to work with how do you go
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about even creating a team that's sustainable and and able to repeatedly play if people are on the
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move as they often are as immigrants I mean that is that is a significant challenge so one is you want to catch
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them early and be a resource early so we work directly with resettlement agencies
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with schools with community partners that would know when people arrive you know that they're here and immediately
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try to get them into something positive so we don't have a closed door policy
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with with our teams sometimes our teams can swell 245 kids over the course of a season or more you know it's not what
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people traditionally think of as a team but then we do you know kids want to play games and and in the United States
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playing games means pass cards and paperwork and so bridging that you know how do you get a kid ready to be able to
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play on the team that's that's something that there's a lot of problem-solving
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that our coaches do and it's also motivation for the kids they arrive they play in they'd get to know the community
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they immediately have access to all the academic support language support but to
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play on that team they got to stick with it and you know they can vote with their
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feet they can kind of control their own fate in that regard I will say we had we
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had one family that was in our program in Oakland that then moved to Greeley Colorado where we have another program
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and ended up captaining our middle school team and Greeley I think it would be so amazing if that could happen more
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often because families do they do move and migrate in order to pursue opportunities where there's jobs we are
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seeing a huge migration to the Midwest central plains a Colorado program tends to be a second
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resettlement type of city and so you do start to see the differences and where people move and where opportunities are
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so married to put my words on it you've got a a moment where people can be drawn
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in for the love of the sport but with that you open up opportunities and channels to help them take the next step
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in life whether it's school or maybe a securing unemployment or who knows maybe
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even playing professionally for a year or two thinking of it way it reminds me again of organizations
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to start out with a particular focus and it works but then those who are the creators are one of the two co-founders
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you begin to think well what about taking that that basic model soccer now initially but why just soccer why not
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basketball why not badminton so to use the language what about the adjacencies you only thought about that so far
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you're not into that maybe you would be well I was bathroom a player in high
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school so I have a good start on that too but we are part of a network of several networks but one that comes to
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mind that kind of speaks to what you're talking about is called up to us sports
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and they are a coalition of what we call sport-based youth development organization so organizations that are
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that Sport Plus or that are doing more than sport and it's all different kinds
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of sports it's I can't remember the number off the top of my head but it's
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more sports than I knew existed you know basketball lacrosse football golf there's so many great lessons that you
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can pull out of different sports it's ray Youth Olympics just about everything
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yeah it's just you know and each sport has has different lessons that are inherent yeah I really appreciate those
00:19:03
of soccer and think in terms of building bridges across culture and and across divides soccer is uniquely suited for
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that I think but I can also see so much value in in each and every sport and the
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skills that it can teach thinking about outcome when you look at the end of the day of what you've done what would be a
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a metric of when you've succeeded with let's make that make it the team down in
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Nicaragua how do you know when that particular setting and that particular investment of your time was paying off
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you know I think measuring impact with kids is is incredibly challenging for the same reason that you know when
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you're a parent you you know you're planting seeds and you don't know
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exactly what's what's gonna grow but we have boiled down what we try to measure
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into five things one is academic advancement and you know are they are they able to gain access to those
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credentials that are meaningful that are going to open one is language development particularly
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with newcomers can you acquire the language skills you need to participate in the economy and access opportunities
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one is social capital so how well are we connecting the kids to networks and and
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safety nets I'm one is healthy lifestyles which is you know being a happy healthy active person who is able
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to avoid risky behaviors and you know value their body and the last one is personal development which is I think a
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little bit more abstract but we want to develop happy confident competent compassionate people people who are good
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people I think too often kids have a lot of external expectations that are put on
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them you know other people define success for them you know it looks like pen or her it looks like that job and we
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want to equip the kids with the skills they need to reach their full potential whatever that is for them and I think
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that's for me if they're happy healthy individuals who are reaching their goals
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and and aspiring towards that that's good that's good enough for me scale here is your opportunity but also
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your challenge you're active and I think it's some 50 countries you've got
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programs and Central America Africa and Beyond if we think of it that way there are probably a billion people out there
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that are in need of this kind of transitional moment as they leave early childhood and get into later childhood
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and then on so in terms of the number of people you're reaching right now and the
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number of young people you'd like to reach ten or fifteen years out what kind
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of skill are we looking at so just to I don't want to overstate our our reach right now but we we've worked
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with kids from more than 50 countries of origin but we haven't actually programmed in 50 countries do I think
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the model could be relevant to really any country absolutely do we have a goal of being a behemoths nonprofit not no we
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want to make sure that the model is effective that we're being true to the communities where we are and
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that we're doing the best we can to meet the overwhelming need I've we get
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approached every single week to open a new program in some city I know the need is there the demand is there so right
00:22:30
now we're really focused on the places where we are how do we maximize that infrastructure what are the next few
00:22:36
places that that really have a need that we could replicate but also how do we package this tool so that other people
00:22:42
like us could take it and run with it and adapt it to their community we don't
00:22:48
need to be experts in every culture and language across the world but I think if
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we have a tool that works then yeah we need to find a way to share it and you're probably eminently eminently
00:22:59
scalable because you do depend on volunteers you don't have to raise a lot of money to put a field staff out there
00:23:04
and in that sense as a as volunteers are your fundamental building blocks here in
00:23:11
principle 10 years out you could be reaching any number of communities any number of groups around the world the
00:23:20
volunteers are actually not our building block anymore we do have staff everywhere yes we leverage volunteers
00:23:27
for a number of different roles but it's led by trained staff I mean when you're
00:23:32
working with kids I think there's a really strong and necessary vetting process and training process
00:23:39
particularly kids of experienced trauma to make sure that the people we put in the field are trained so volunteers
00:23:45
serve a very crucial supporting role but tend to not be in a leading role and that is a limiting factor in terms of
00:23:53
scale so what we are looking at is who are the community organizations that we could partner with and that are already
00:24:02
there that already have that infrastructure have that leadership see what they're missing like one thing
00:24:07
that a lot of organizations are missing is women in in sport it's we have an
00:24:13
unbelievable supply of women athletes that is incredibly uncommon around the world everywhere I go it's it's men who
00:24:22
are coaching and so it's not surprising that women make up less than 10 and of soccer players in the world's
00:24:28
global sport when they have nobody to see and look to so I think there's a there's some opportunity areas for
00:24:36
things that that we as an American organization could export but there's also a lot of work to be done here in
00:24:42
our communities here with newcomers arriving and girls here who aren't accessing sport in the way that they
00:24:48
could thank goodness for many things including title nine that's probably had certain many factors
00:24:55
that contributed to women in sports but title nine going way back in our history
00:24:59
part of the u.s. Civil Rights Act has probably been vital for helping you now have the flow of women who want to work
00:25:06
with you it was a game-changing moment in into to mandate equity and is is an incredible statement and you know right
00:25:15
now I'm following what's going on in FIFA very closely in terms of mandating
00:25:20
not quite equity but participation by women at every level you know that's gonna trickle down it's gonna open doors
00:25:26
for girls in sport we're already seeing it in Nicaragua but I think those who've
00:25:31
had the opportunity and that privilege from my perspective have an obligation to pay it forward and I think that is
00:25:40
something that really resonates with women in the u.s. that you know can we create an avenue that they can step up
00:25:46
and try to find a way to pay it forward got a couple more personal closing questions here number one what really
00:25:53
drew you into this what was the I don't know triggering moment or the epiphany
00:25:58
that led you to do what you're doing um I think one moment that stands out is
00:26:04
when I was coaching at Lehigh it was a grad student there which is how I met the founder Ben Gucci Rd he he launched
00:26:12
this out of Lehigh entrepreneurship program I had the chance to travel to South America to see the World Cup
00:26:18
qualifiers for South America and I had never been really exposed to the inequality that that can exist for women
00:26:27
elsewhere and I saw it it was empty stadiums it was there was no program there was coaches who were sitting in
00:26:36
the corner in the shade you know not you know they were they were being punished
00:26:39
to be the women's coach and that just really didn't I don't know it's just
00:26:45
stuck with me it didn't it didn't sit well and you know what can I do about
00:26:49
this and then I met Ben and he had this phenomenal idea to to try to address some of these inequities to try to
00:26:58
really build a a microcosm of a better world through soccer and you know it just went from there and maybe last
00:27:08
query here as you reflect on who you are now and how you became what you're doing
00:27:14
and think about the the moments that did make a difference in your own life course here for those who might be
00:27:24
watching this particular dialogue who are thinking gee I might want to do something like that yeah what advice
00:27:31
would you have for somebody who's maybe involved in athletics or something equivalent who would like to think about
00:27:39
working with the youth of the world to help them get from point A to point B the way you've been doing yeah I think
00:27:45
there's a there's a lot of ways that people can get involved I think the
00:27:48
first thing they should do is is really think about the skills they have and what they can bring and I think one sort
00:27:55
of misconception is that passion is enough that you know I like soccer or I like working with kids you know there's
00:28:02
got to be a way I can help you know ultimately running an organization is business and and businesses need skills
00:28:08
you know we need you need marketing you need an IT person you need legal help you need you need skills and I think
00:28:17
that that moment when somebody says you know I can connect something that I do well to to a greater good
00:28:25
you know that's magical and we are very fortunate to have found people who are
00:28:30
willing to help and lend their talents and skills and resources to what we're
00:28:34
doing at different moments you know one of my former players at Lehigh helped us
00:28:38
build a website that was prepared for you know the new mobile world that the fact that she would apply her talent and
00:28:47
skill for that to to this work is amazing it's opened all kinds of doors for us
00:28:52
I think really reckon you know dialing in on what what talent you have to offer and if it is coaching or teaching oh my
00:28:59
gosh you are a Saints because then people who work with kids they they are so undervalued and it is it is a skill
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so if that's your skill please apply it to something to an organization that's
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doing this work but if you have other skills you can that can be really useful too it's great Mary thank you for your
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great guidance on that and thank you for joining a program today thank you so much for having me is what an amazing
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community and we are so excited to be a part of it and it'll have you as part of
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our community thank you very much thank you you