Mission Viejo Teen Uses Soccer Balls to Spread Hope

For 17-year-old Gabriela Iribarne, soccer is more than just a favorite sport.

It’s a path to peace too.

After all, she explains, soccer is the world’s most popular sport. Every time the Laguna Hills High School senior has visited another country—among them Brazil, Mexico and Argentina—she has played pickup soccer with local children. In the jungles of Thailand, the children were using a bamboo ball, she said.

“Everyone can have fun with a soccer ball, no matter where you are,” said Iribarne, who lives in Mission Viejo. “It doesn’t matter what you come from.”

Iribarne is now the driving force behind Futbol 4 Dreams, an organization that collects soccer balls and equipment, delivering them to refugee camps and orphanages in such far-flung countries as Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Uganda, Iraq, Peru, Russia and Bolivia.

The group has sent more than 3,000 soccer balls—decorated with cheerful, hand-drawn messages of peace—to 23 countries in the last five years. Most of the balls are shipped through church missions or individuals traveling abroad, while other balls were sent to Iraq through the Marines.

Soccer has played a key part in Iribarne’s young life. She's a member of Mission Viejo’s West Coast FC team. She will attend Rice University on a soccer scholarship next fall and will go to Argentina this spring  break to train with its Under-20 National Women’s Team. (Iribarne’s father, Enrique, was born in Argentina, and she holds dual citizenship).

“I’m very competitive,” Iribarne said when asked about soccer’s importance in her life. “Besides that, it’s being with the team and having the opportunity to have a group of people who share the same interest as you.”

Right now, Iribarne’s goal for Futbol 4 Dreams is to collect enough soccer balls, pumps, uniforms, cleats and other gear to fill a shipping container bound for Morocco. Futbol 4 Dreams also sent smaller shipments to Kenya and the Dominican Republic recently and is planning to send balls to Mexico at spring break.

Iribarne’s effort, previously known as Futbol 4 Refugees, was founded with her older sister, Nicolette Iribarne, 23, who is now studying abroad in Spain. When her sister moved, Gabriela carried on the family tradition, establishing a club at Laguna Hills High School to continue its work. Last year, LHHS’ boys soccer team collected hundreds of cleats and balls for children in Haiti and Indonesia.

Futbol 4 Dreams has also spread to other Orange County campuses, as students at Tesoro High School  in Las Flores and Santa Margarita High School in Rancho Santa Margarita set up chapters this year, Iribarne said. Students in the clubs organize ball drives and use marking pens to decorate each ball with messages such as “Peace” and “Je t’aime!” before they are sent.

Iribarne keeps an album full of photographs of children who have received shipments from Futbol 4 Dreams. But she fondly remembers a visit to Brazil in 2009, when she got to make a personal delivery to impoverished girls from Rio de Janeiro.

“It shows how all the effort pays off. I got to see the reaction of the girls when they got their soccer balls,” she said. “You can see the pictures, but it’s different when you get to be there. You see how something so little can make a big difference."

For more information about Futbol 4 Dreams, go online to futbol4dreams.weebly.com/ or e-mail futbol4dreams@gmail.com.

While Futbol 4 Dreams is not set up as an official charity, it works with the Southern California-based charity Soccer for Hope so that contributors can write off their donations, Iribarne said.