Goal Click
Refugees:

Football photos and stories, unfiltered

Goal Click Refugees is a unique series documenting the personal stories and experiences of refugees and asylum-seekers across the globe through the lens of football.

Because I am a girl, I can be the person that changes how the community perceives girls’ football and breaks the wall of shame,” said Maram, from Zaatari camp in Jordan.
© Goal Click/UNHCR/UNICEF

Goal Click Refugees:

Football photos and stories, unfiltered

Because I am a girl, I can be the person that changes how the community perceives girls’ football and breaks the wall of shame,” said Maram, from Zaatari camp in Jordan. © Goal Click/UNHCR/UNICEF

Goal Click Refugees is a unique series documenting the personal stories and experiences of refugees and asylum-seekers across the globe through the lens of football.

RIFA, Brooklyn, NYC. RIFA (Rooklyn International Football Association) is a Brooklyn-based organisation using soccer to work with refugee, asylee, and immigrant youth and provide a space for connection with their peers in a safe and supportive environment. © Goal Click/UNHCR/RIFA/Samuel Gedeon

With disposable cameras, participants captured the realities of their football lives and communities on and off the pitch. The result: intimate photos and personal stories from Jordan to Kenya and South Sudan, and from London to Sydney.

The series offers a platform to unheard voices and shows the power of the common language of football, which unites so many, on and off the pitch.

Many of the stories offer hope, showing how football can help marginalised people find their feet again and re-anchor in a new society. That is particularly relevant at this time of rising global displacement.

Please explore the site and share the stories, which were brought together by Goal Click, the global football storytelling and photography project, and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Pictures and stories will be updated through 2021.

Donation links to support the important work of UNHCR and Common Goal, a group aiming to help social change through football, are on this page below and included throughout the series.

Children play football in the neighbourhood of Hashem Shemali, in East Amman. Many in the area have Palestinian heritage. © Goal Click/UNHCR/Abdelrahman Hasan al Attar