Recognizing the need for social and sports development in Charlotte, Creative Player Sports Foundation, was founded not only to promote soccer but to bring together children from different socio-economic backgrounds and diverse cultural heritage and be able to provide an alternative to nourish this vision of enhancing the lives of at risk youth in the Charlotte community through structured athleti
cs and educational activities. Our aim is to provide social inclusion, eliminate social barriers and increase participation and use soccer as a means to an end. Whereas the traditional sports development approach might be regarded as a product led and sports centered, our project will be more “needs based”, using sports to address broader aspects of social inclusion as a means to promote aspects of personal, social and community development. CPSF aims to use soccer as a means of empowering children individuals through providing access to specific physical skills, but the growth and development that comes from the involvement in a team, a sense of belonging and a gained self-esteem, sportsmanship, and participation. Participation in team sports have many learning opportunities besides the skillsets obtained from sports training itself, but also learn to be team players, learn to compete and become disciplined and healthy, productive, well-rounded leaders and citizens. We believe that the many benefits of soccer should be available to all children throughout Charlotte regardless of their ability to pay or not. These objectives will be achieved by supporting children and utilizing after school soccer programs as a tool to encourage, foster and nurture youth living in Charlotte's underserved urban inner city by allowing them to have access to high quality sports training provided by Creative Player Inc.’s acclaimed and proven system.
