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Joselyn Meneses will soon reach her two month mark since joining Fútbol Sin Fronteras Granada (FSF, Spanish for Soccer Without Borders) as a coach. The 23-year-old is on the verge of culminating her studies and receiving a Law degree from the Universidad Popular de Nicaragua, and has already provided a wonderfully fresh perspective on programming from her role at the helm of the newly initiated La Villa program.
La Villa is the northern region of the city of Granada, an area with few resources and even fewer opportunities accessible to girls. The center of La Villa is about a 30 minute walk from our FSF community center, which has made it difficult in the past for girls from the region to access program activities, particularly in the evenings. Under Joselyn, the program has already experienced tremendous growth, and is poised to be able to provide more and more girls with the social, educational and economic support they need to overcome obstacles to success.
Just accompany Joselyn on one of our many house visits to La Villa to see the motivation and dedication that she puts into every aspect of her work; she is caring, thoughtful, personable and truly believes in the power of sport, and specifically soccer, to make a positive change in the lives of young girls in Granada. What better way to incite that change than through the facilitation of a smart and powerful Granada native.
"One of the many reasons why I joined FSF is because helping people from any aspect of life is one of my motivations”, Joselyn told me. “It is an amazing opportunity to help develop the girls, with a space that facilitates healthy minds, and above all to keep them away from the vices and bad influences of the streets”.
Joselyn discovered FSF through a niece who participated in years past. She often arrived at practices to support her when her mother wasn’t able to make it due to a busy work schedule. By the time her niece left the team, Joselyn had already formed profound friendships with many of the girls, and
found herself checking back often to see how the organization was evolving over time.
Outside of her work with FSF, Joselyn really does spend the majority of her time helping people from all aspects of life. Her family runs an organization called “Comedor Infantil Fe, Amor y Melodía”, which aims to rescue at-risk youth from involvement in gang activity, changing their negative thoughts and converting them into positives that can be used for “el bien común para todos los seres humanos” (the common good for all human beings). The idea came about as a result of the death of her brother, and the organization has been up and running for three months now. It is another truly fantastic initiative to inspire positive change in the lives of youth who might not have otherwise had an opportunity to escape vicious cycles of gang violence.
Fútbol Sin Fronteras could not be more thrilled to have Joselyn working to build and grow programming at La Villa, and we look forward to seeing everything that she has to bring to the table in the coming months and years!