Soccer project looks to net school students
The charitable arm of Real Madrid FC is using sports-based tuition to improve the lives of children in one of China's most impoverished areas, as Sun Xiaochen reports.
Zhuo Yi loves kicking a beverage can around the rural neighborhood near his home, pretending he is dribbling a soccer ball past defenders one after another. It's been the sixth-grader's favorite outdoor activity since he first watched a televised game by chance at a village grocery store in 2013.
"I was fascinated by the action right away, so for fun I started kicking anything I could find - from stones and clods of mud to plastic bottles - because my father couldn't afford to buy me a ball," said the 12-year-old student at Siyuan Experimental School in Jinzhai county, western Anhui province, who comes from an impoverished family.
