A Life With No Limits
Mac, England
The Positive Youth Foundation provides opportunities for young people with challenging circumstances to reach their full potential. The organisation aims to reduce health inequalities, increase employability and integration, reduce exploitation and increase opportunities for access to creative arts programmes. PYF’s INVOLVED Integration Programmes work with newly arrived asylum seeking and refugee young people between the ages of 8-25, actively promoting integration within the local community and celebrating diversity and difference. The INVOLVED football programme started in 2017 with 12 young people from Syria, but in three years the weekly sessions have welcomed almost 200 young people from 42 different nationalities.
Can you tell us your personal story?
My name is Elmakawi, and I’m known as "Mac". I’m Sudanese and from the Nuba mountains. My parents fled persecution over 20 years ago because of our ethnicity and religion. I was only 9 months old when my parents left the country in search of a better life and justice for me and themselves. We lived in Beirut, Lebanon, for over 18 years before moving to the UK in 2017.
I played football before moving to the United Kingdom. My dad introduced me to a football academy at the age of 7 and I fell in love with it then. I kept going from one team to the other, including No Limits Football Academy, Racing Club and YFA. Growing up as a Sudanese in Beirut was good and bad. It was good as I grew up there, studied, and made a lot of friends, but bad in the sense that some people were prejudiced in their opinions.
Now I live in Coventry and play for a team called Elim FC, a Saturday league football club. I got to know all my teammates after joining the club and I have one fellow Sudanese player that plays with me. British people are so friendly.
I work at McDonald’s and will be starting my first year at university this September. In the future I want to finish my degree, have my own business and my ultimate goal is to be able to afford a Mercedes G-Wagon!
What did you try to show with the photos? Was there any wider meaning with the photos?
The photos were taken at a PYF football session. The people are from different backgrounds, religions, countries and ethnicities, mostly people that fled persecution for a better life. The boy in the yellow shirt is called Simon, he's from Iraq.
I tried to reveal how sports and football welcome people from different backgrounds and walks of life. Football unites communities as it doesn’t discriminate against anyone.
Why is football important to you and your community?
Football was always the thing that made me happy and would always take my mind off things. It gives me the opportunity to clear my mind. Football is important for my physical well-being and it is a way to socialise.
There is not a day that passes without me seeing a kid playing football or a group of friends kicking a ball about, it’s everywhere.
