Their faces lit up when they entered the pitch. As if nothing else existed. “Where is the ball?”, Horep asked, wanting to play with his brother Beteo.

Two children benefiting from the European program SPIN that PAOK FC are involved in. Two children that their destiny brought to Greece. Last October they got the chance to train with PAOK players.

“They had a great time there”, their mother Grace tells us. “They enjoyed it a lot. Since then, they tell me every day ‘we want to go to PAOK and play football’. And now here, in the stadium, they are thrilled to get a second chance to play with the team’s shirt on”.

Horep and Beteo stem from Somalia and Nigeria, but the former was born in Greece. Life was hard for Grace: “I fled my country in order to save my life and my new-born baby”, she remembers. “I am Muslim and my husband is Christian. His family wanted to kill me and take Beteo from me when he was a baby. My body is full of scars. They burned my house to the ground”.

It’s been already eight years that she is in Thessaloniki and she understands only too well the repercussions of the financial crisis that has hit Greece and the refugee problem. “Things used to be better, but now they are very hard. Not just for me. For Greece and the Greeks. When we came here, we lived in a refugee camp. Through the assistance of organisms like Praksis I was able to find a home. For a year now I have a tough time making ends meet, pay the rent and find food for my children. That’s the toughest part”.

Horep and Beteo speak Greek, go to school and, through SPIN, they will be taught futsal, will get the opportunity to play, have fun, fight for a better future and step out of social exclusion.

We can all make this world a better place.