Business Excellence Awards 2018
Excellence in Education and Learning: Project GOAL Inc.
The phrase “having multiple balls in the air” can mean having many opportunities on the horizon.
For Providence nonprofit Project GOAL Inc. (Greater Opportunities for Athletes to Learn), soccer balls represent a portal to academic achievement and personal excellence.
Project GOAL gives children a chance, many for the first time, to be on soccer fields or in tutoring sessions, exploring colleges and career fields, and more, said Darius Shirzadi, Project GOAL co-founder and executive director.
In Project GOAL, students study during after-school hours to earn soccer time. Students in the program meet twice a week for three-hour sessions, including 90 minutes of classroom time, focused on goal setting and group interaction. Students working toward their academic goals and making responsible decisions are rewarded with 90 minutes of soccer training and teamwork instruction right after the class.
Project GOAL has spent 14 years connecting more than 1,500 disadvantaged Rhode Island middle schoolers with academic enrichment through soccer. Soccer has been a vehicle for life lessons on goals, responsibility, achievement and collaboration that carry into the classroom, setting kids up for success.
For kids who qualify, it’s all free.
“There were deficiencies in after-school programming, challenges with fees and transportation,” Shirzadi said. “It was always educational programming first and then developed from that.”
Project GOAL’s founders include Shirzadi, Peter Wheaton and Javier Centeno. The program is strengthened by partnerships they’ve forged, connecting kids with their community.
Shirzadi, a former soccer coach, is the former director of Latino and Cape Verdean Community Affairs with the New England Revolution. He is now a senior global markets manager at Cooley Group in Pawtucket.
Wheaton is chairman and CEO of CORE Business Technologies in East Providence.
Centeno, soccer director for Project GOAL and 2018 Boys Coach of the Year with Soccer Rhode Island, played All-New England and All-America soccer at Community College of Rhode Island. He is restoration director at Calcutt Middle School in Central Falls.
Thanks to their work and networking, GOAL students play at halftime at Brown University soccer games. Rhode Island College master’s degree candidates tutor Project GOAL students.
Since Project GOAL kids are often the first generation in their families to consider higher education, said Shirzadi, Bank of America and BankNewport run financial college-planning workshops for their parents.
Adidas just held a soccer clinic for program participants with the New England Revolution’s Andrew Farrell at Providence’s Moses Brown School, during which Project GOAL athletes got cleats and new soccer balls.
“Moses Brown School has been honored to serve as a host site for Project GOAL for the past 12 years,” said Headmaster Matt Glenndining. “We’re proud to support the program, and even prouder to have enrolled some incredible students from Project GOAL at Moses Brown.”
Similarly, at the Wheeler School in Providence, Allison Gaines Pell, head of school, assists Project GOAL in getting students to apply for its scholarships. The nonprofit then pays the entrance-exam fee. About 60 program kids have gone to private schools on full scholarships in that fashion, Shirzadi said.
In an effort to increase female participation, Project GOAL is coordinating tutoring and training from women at Brown and Bryant universities. “This year we had the highest percentage of girls in the program,” said Shirzadi, 33 percent.
Last year, Project GOAL’s Community Outreach program began. It welcomes volunteers into the classrooms or on the fields as mentors. It also exposes students to cultural and career offerings, such as a collaboration with Rhode Island Builders Association at the Rhode Island Home show last spring.
Ninety-six percent of Project GOAL members graduate high school, and 90 percent go to college.
Shirzadi said past participants, now adults, come back, visit and kick a soccer ball around. “There’s a big sense of community in the organization. To see these kids come back? It’s very nice for everybody.”
