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Fabián Ferraro was born and grew up in Sambrizzi, a modest settlement in Moreno where things went uphill from day one. He lived with his parents and five siblings in a single room, with no privacy and an outdoor bathroom. Hunger, lack of clothing and lack of opportunities were part of everyday life.
“That is poverty, I didn’t bathe until I was 17cleanse me with a fountain of boiling water, go to school without shoes and go to bed for many nights drinking only a little milk.”
At the age of five, moved by a mixture of need and courage, he began boarding the Sarmiento train from Paso del Rey to ask for coins so he could eat. He walked 25 blocks to get to the train station and spent the day between cars. And one day he just didn’t come back. “You start to find more things outside than inside. One day you return to the night, then you stop coming back and you realize this you survive and that you have freedom. Leaving my house saved my life“.
The road was his hard school: cold nights under the Once Station, ranching in abandoned warehouses and the deep sadness of having to capture his brother Eduardo again and again until he died at the age of 15.”I suffered greatly from his deathbut I had no time to repent; I had to keep surviving.”
At 12, he met “Quique” Villanueva, a traveling train salesman who “adopted” him as a son and taught him a trade. Thanks to him, he returned to school and learned to take care of himself. “Little by little I became a street vendor.. I looked into the eyes and knew who would buy me. When I started making my own money, I stopped feeling discriminated against. “I could buy my sneakers, go out and feel part of it.”
At the same time, his sister Norma searched tirelessly for him and the reunion came almost by chance on a rainy morning. He had a family again: father “Quique” and mother-sister Norma.
Football has been his passion since he was a child. When he was 15, they took him to a trial training session for Argentino de Merlo. He arrived malnourished and with many defects, but was surrounded by trainers who were more than that.
“My coaches not only taught me how to play football, but also how to be a person. They even taught me go take a shower. “I didn’t know what that was.”
With them he found support, affection and belonging. At 17 he was already training with the first team and at 18 he made his official debut. The club also gave him access to therapy, a tool that helped him heal. “Through therapy I have learned to live with less pain. I was brave, but internally I had no self-esteem. “I learned to enjoy.”
He tried to return to his parents, but time had left deep wounds. His father died unrecognized in a diabetic coma and the bond with his mother could no longer be restored. “It hurt me a lotbut over the years I have come to understand their stories and that They never had opportunities. And I also understood that it was my own marginality that pushed me to improve.”
His career took him to Andorra, where he played for two and a half years and even worked in ski centers to earn some extra money. But nostalgia overwhelmed him and he returned to his neighborhood. There he saw many boys taking dangerous paths and decided to intervene. He suggested playing soccer, exercising and changing habits. “I wanted them to reverse what the neighborhood said about them.. They arrived in jeans, I lent them shorts, I told them how to eat, how to take care of yourself“And it worked: in 1994, Buenos Aires emerged undefeated as champions after 50 games without defeat. On the night of the celebration, it became clear to the entire neighborhood that something big was happening.”
That was the starting signal for the founding of the sports center and club Defensores del Chaco on an abandoned landfill. From a room full of rubbish, burnt cars and hard earth, a club emerged that today has professional areas, a theater for 250 people, a huge cultural center and welcomes 4,500 boys and girls per year. The young people who had been “the dangerous ones in the neighborhood” became coaches and role models. They also built a model garden for 200 children. Where there had been abandonment before, there was now abandonment Projects, affection and community.
His social calling continued to grow and in the 90s he developed a methodology for street football without a referee, where behavior also determines the result.
Over time, this discipline began to develop and other countries also began to implement it. Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador were the first to explore this model. In 2005, the first Latin American street football meeting took place on Avenida 9 de Julio in the center of the city of Buenos Aires. And Fabián’s dream reached a higher level when the first World Cup in this discipline was held in Germany in 2006, parallel to the International Federation of Associated Football (FIFA) World Cup.
Today, Fabián continues to change reality with the FUDE program, which reaches 16 clubs in Moreno and more than 10,500 boys and girls. They managed to equip playing fields, install lighting and changing rooms, and create containment and community environments that keep young people off the streets and drugs.
In addition, he founded the Fundación Defensores del Chaco, a social organization in the Chaco Chico, Paso del Rey and Moreno neighborhoods. Argentina.
“Since our beginnings, we have been guided by the social construction of living space and, through self-governing and collective processes, we strive for the comprehensive improvement of a community through a sustainable organizational model. We created a community model that traveled the world through street football and the formation of collective leadership. We did it by looking for a dream, getting the ball rolling and using sport as an engine of social and community change.”
Fabián’s story is not only that of a man who managed to escape extreme poverty, it is also the story of a man who, after saving himself, decided to dedicate his life to saving others.
“I’m doing everything I can to ensure that what happened to me doesn’t happen to any child.. I am happy: I have my wife, my children, work and recognition. But You can’t be happy alone when there are boys who eat stir-fry. I want a better country, a country where we can all be happy“.
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