Events

The Homeless World Cup is an annual, international street soccer tournament, uniting teams of people who are homeless and excluded to take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to represent their country and change their lives forever. It has inspired and continues to support soccer projects around the world working with homeless and marginalised people.

The first Homeless World Cup was in Graz, Austria in 2003. Since then Gothenburg, Edinburgh, Cape Town and Copenhagen have played host to the tournament. Having participated with our Street Socceroos since the 2005 tournament in Edinburgh, The Big Issue put in a successful bid to host the 2008 Homeless World Cup in Melbourne.

In 2008, running from december 1st to 7th, Melbourne will host the sixth Homeless Word Cup and will welcome teams from over 50 nations worldwide.

Players will come together in the spirit of sport and community to represent their countries, entertain the crowds and demonstrate the power of sport as a means of social inclusion.

Make sure you come to this fantastic free community event!

Adopt A Team
Get your school involved with the Melbourne 2008 Homeless World Cup and learn about another culture.

The Adopt a Team program is an opportunity to enrich the learning of thousands of Australian school students by linking them to the Melbourne 2008 Homeless World Cup and making it possible for some disadvantaged nations to participate.

Within a structure provided by the Education Foundation Australia, and supported by the Homeless World Cup, school communities will be invited to adopt a team participating in the Homeless World Cup.

For more details visit The Big Issue website.

Former Guantanamo Detainee, Mamdouh Habib, is speaking in Melbourne on..

6:30pm Wednesday 3rd of December
Trades Hall, Victoria

Mamdouh Habib has been one of the many victims of the War on Terror.

Branded a terrorist, Habib was arrested in 2001 and imprisoned and tortured in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt, before being sent to Guantanamo Bay for 2 years, alongside David Hicks.

It was here he was tortured by US soldiers, heavily drugged, deprived of sleep for weeks, beaten, given electric shocks, repeatedly injected with a needle in the same place so that it became terribly painful, left naked in freezing rooms for hours on end in isolation and threatened with rape.
In 2005 he was released without any charge.

Upon returning to Australia, Habib and his family have suffered police surveillance, threats of violence, and even assault by NSW police, yet received no compensation.

This special meeting will feature Mamdouh Habib discussing his new book and giving a first hand account of the brutality of the United States, and will expose the War on Terror for being a War OF Terror.

 

Panel also includes:

Rob Stary
Civil Liberties lawyer involved in defending "terror" suspects Jack Thomas, and members of the Barwon 12

Vashti Kenway
Leading member of Socialist Alternative

Sponsored by Socialist Alternative
For more info ph: 0402 175 330

Public meeting with Mamdouh Habib discussing his new book My Story: the Terrorist Who Wasn't.

Presented by Socialist Alternative.