Impetus founder Ben Gilby was invited to speak exclusively to The One Goal Organisation’s Daniela Porcelli about their fantastic campaign with various star international women footballers to raise money to help organisations to use sport to aid communities.
The One Goal was founded in 2018 by Swedish international goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl and Daniela Porcelli, a renowned photographer from Switzerland. As Daniela outlined to me, “The One Goal’s vision is to become a unique worldwide charitable organization that uses an authentic process within the women’s game to achieve it. Our mission at The One Goal is to work locally and internationally to raise funds from the women’s game which we will put back by donating to help organizations that are using sports as a method to help people and their communities.”
“Another important thing is that we want to raise awareness about women’s football and women who play and have played football. We are raising money thanks to famous women footballers donating signed match worn shirts. Every single item that has been donated tells a story that deserves to be told. We want to tell and share those stories.”
The One Goal has its roots in an idea that Daniela developed in 2017: “I thought about establishing a non-profit-organization, but in a smaller way. My idea was to receive signed football items from women’s football players to auction to fans. The money raised would be invested into girls’ projects. A friend of mine told me to ask Hedvig Lindahl for a shirt, and he connected me with her. After the first email we talked about this idea and a few months later The One Goal was officially founded.”
The campaign has raised incredible amounts of money so far: “Since the beginning until before the #TOGetherAgainstCorona campaign this summer, we raised around £10,000 with football items sales and auctions. Then the campaign happened and in just a few weeks we made nearly £25,000. Of course, I have to say, that the first year of The One Goal me and Hedvig were alone in volunteering our free-time to it. Only later on and mostly during the campaign time, we had many volunteers joining to support our goals. This makes us more successful. We are certain about the fact that together, we can make a difference and the more, the merrier!”
Daniela continues: “The most essential thing for Hedvig and me are that the projects we support are transparent and smaller. We are in constant dialog with the owners of those organizations we support. That gives us good and up to date knowledge about the projects and how they use the funds to help girls so we are sure of the fact that our raised money is used as promised.”
The campaign has reached such a momentum that now some really big name players are helping out by donating their shirts as Porcelli explains: “We are grateful to every player who donates a shirt or other items towards our charitable organization and projects we support. We want to give every player this platform and hope someday we can say that everyone was happy to join us. During the present campaign #ShirtsForGirls the most well-known players who have donated their shirts are Sam Kerr, Caroline Seger and Sara Däbritz among others.
Earlier, Daniela mentioned the increase of volunteers helping the campaign this time round – and their jobs are many and varied: “We are thankful for every volunteer who joined us and is happy to spend some of their free-time to help in a charitable way. To name a few roles: Social Media Creators, Graphic designers, Accountant, Online Store Manager and many more. Everyone can support using their skills and experiences. But we also hope together we can teach each other new things, which brings you further. We are always open to welcome more people into our organization and we believe that everyone can contribute in one way or another.”
This year’s #ShirtsForGirls campaign has run for a month and donations can be made until 23:59 GMT on Tuesday 1st December. The following day will see the winners of each shirt drawn. There’s over twenty incredible signed match worn shirts from some of the biggest names in women’s football. To support the campaign and try to win one of the shirts, go to www.theonegoal.org, click on the shirt’s image and “get entries”. Depending on how much you choose to donate, you receive a number of entry tickets to win the jersey the clicked on. The more entry tickets purchased, the bigger the chance to win. By purchasing entry tickets, the money goes straight into our donation pool and supports the project: the girl’s academy of El Cambio Academy in Uganda.
To summarise the organisation and its aims, Daniela said: “We have a unique approach in the women’s game. We have thankfully women’s players donating their items to support girls projects. It is a circle. The money gets raised through women’s football and goes back into women’s football. That is what I love about our approach. With only £5 we can make a difference. Each of us.”
There’s still time for YOU to make a difference, visit www.theonegoal.org to donate now and try and win one of their incredible signed match worn shirts!
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