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- A soccer program iACT founded by late Redondo Beach activists Katie-Jay Scott and Gabriel Stauring helped refugees in Chad find hope.
asserted
refugees → click → hope
- The program helped former refugees Mohammed Annour and Moubarak Abdallah thrive in Sweden, where they raise families and coach.
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they → help → families
- Trump administration cuts to foreign aid and tighter refugee policies threaten the program as humanitarian needs grow.
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needs → threaten → program
Mohammed Annour spent much of his youth living in a flimsy shelter in a dusty, overcrowded refugee camp in east Africa, where the days were long, the food was poor and the future nonexistent.
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future → spend → Africa
That’s one option,” said Annour, who fled war in Sudan for the refugee camp in Chad when he was 9.
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he → ’ → Chad
“The other one is you stay there.
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you → stay → ?
But you don’t have a future.”
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you → have → future
If he had stayed, Annour, now 33, has little doubt how his story would have ended.
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story → stay → doubt
“Probably,” he said, “I’m dead.
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I → say → ?
Instead, he’s in Sweden, raising two boys, working as a quality control inspector for a textile company and playing amateur soccer for a team in the country’s fifth division.
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he → ’ → division
And the only thing that separates his experience from the tens of thousands of desperate people he left behind in the camp is the fact someone believed in him enough to give him a chance.
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someone → separate → chance
“Everybody needs a chance,” Annour said.
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Annour → need → chance
People just need a chance in life.”
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People → need → life
“And we got that chance,” he continued, “because of Katie-Jay and Gabriel.”
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he → get → Jay
That would be Katie-Jay Scott and Gabriel Stauring, a pair of South Bay activists who showed up at Annour’s camp on a blazing hot day in 2011, rolled a battered soccer ball across a barren field and transformed an untold number of lives.
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who → show → lives
Scott and Stauring founded the humanitarian group iACT largely to respond to the crisis in Darfur, a semi-desert plateau in western Sudan that has known nothing but war this century.
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that → found → war
But unlike many of the dozens of other similarly minded people and groups working in Africa, Scott and Stauring came not to preach, but to listen.
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Scott → work → Africa
They came with questions, not answers.
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They → come → questions
And what they were told was that the children in the camps needed more than food and shelter.
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children → tell → food
They needed a routine, they needed recreation, they needed joy and they needed hope.
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they → need → hope
In other words, they needed soccer.
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they → need → soccer
“Many organizations came into the camps.
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organizations → come → camps
They just came around and took some pictures and then they leave,” said Annour, a slight man with a serious countenance.
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Annour → come → countenance
“I think [Scott and Stauring] understood us as humans, not just these kids or these people who need food or shelter.
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who → think → food
“They saw another side.
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They → see → side
They saw these people that can make something in life.”
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that → see → life
Stauring and Scott were killed in a car accident in Manhattan Beach five years ago, but their legacy lives on in the unique advocacy and aid program they created, one that uses soccer to teach skills and provide structure to refugees stranded in camps, shelters and intolerable poverty in four countries on two continents.
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that → kill → continents
“They were so kind, careful,” Annour said.
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Annour → say → ?
It didn’t matter where you came from, which color you are.
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you → matter → where
They were open and gave time to everyone they met.
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they → give → everyone
”
“Honestly, I didn’t know they were going to change my life or anything,” added Moubarak Abdallah, another refugee introduced to soccer by Scott and Stauring.
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Abdallah → know → Scott
“I saw them as other people who just come and go.
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who → see → people
“They wanted to help our ideas shine, to [give] other people hope.
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ideas → want → hope
They were listening to what I needed.”
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I → listen → what
Another 1,800 children are enrolled in the group’s Little Ripples preschool program, which also served 475,000 meals to students and staff last year.
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which → enrol → students
But the organization, like many similarly focused humanitarian groups, is fighting for its survival amid a global backlash against refugees and migrants.
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organization → focus → refugees
The hostility has been especially strong in the U.S., where the second Trump administration has sharply restricted immigration and asylum access and drastically cut congressionally approved spending for life-sustaining programs previously funded through USAID.
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administration → restrict → USAID
Many European countries have followed that lead, adopting a stauncher approach to border enforcement and deportations and slashing support for development assistance by 13.8% in 2025, the largest cut in a decade.
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countries → follow → decade
This summer, violent anti-immigrant protests in South Africa forced more than 178,000 people to flee to Zimbabwe, Malawi, Nigeria and other countries, reversing a trend that has seen the region’s richest country welcome migrants to work on farms, in construction and other low-paid jobs.
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country → force → construction
Public sentiment toward refugees and migrants has also hardened elsewhere, creating a crisis for nonprofit aid groups.
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sentiment → harden → groups
…and 69 more, not listed.
The Aporia
