From Hong Kong to The Bronx: how Andrew So’s South Bronx United is helping young immigrant footballers

Teenagers Mohamed Konate and Maria Martinez had very humble beginnings. They fled the Ivory Coast and Mexico, respectively, at a young age in search for better life opportunities in the United States. They found themselves in the poverty-stricken district of South Bronx, New York City with nothing but survival instincts and a burgeoning interest in football.

Who would have thought that a decade on we would see the pair of high-school seniors posing for photos at a dazzling red-carpet awards event in Berlin this week. Konate and Martinez were representing South Bronx United (SBU) – a not-for-profit football programme striving to improve the lives of disadvantaged youths in the area’s most underprivileged communities – as it scooped the prestigious 2020 Laureus Sport for Good Award.

Konate and Martinez are just two of many success stories since the project’s founding in 2009. Not bad at all, considering the 1.4 million-strong Bronx population was deemed the nation’s poorest with 49 per cent of its children living below the poverty line, according to the US Census Bureau in 2010. That percentage dropped to 40 last year – but still much higher than the city average of 27.

Enter Andrew So, a former public school teacher in the low-income neighbourhood of Morrisania, southwest Bronx. SBU was the brainchild of So and his wife, Steph, having spent years in a borough widely regarded as the country’s most densely populated and ethnically diverse area. And birthplace of hip-hop.

“South Bronx has the highest poverty rate of any district in the United States, despite being just a few subway stops from the centre of wealth in the world, Manhattan,” said executive director So, who proudly accepted Laureus’ “tremendous contribution to society” award first presented by Nelson Mandela in 2000.