December 12 2005
Final Draw: Shevchenko, Milla, Radebe and others support "6 villages for 2006 "
12/12/2005 - The Final Draw for the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ provided an unprecedented worldwide platform for the 6 villages for 2006 charity campaign. Andriy Shevchenko, Roger Milla and Lucas Radebe were among the many celebrities supporting 6 villages for 2006 at the event.
Andriy Shevchenko, European Football Player of the Year 2004, called on millions of football fans around the world to support 6 villages for 2006 in a two-minute film which was aired during the broadcast of the Final Draw for the 2006 FIFA World Cup™.
"People who are successful and those who are national leaders should place the future in the foreground, and our children are the future," Shevchenko, one of more than 70 footballers serving as a "FIFA for SOS Children's Villages" ambassador, told worldwide audiences via the film.
Shevchenko is particularly supporting the work of SOS Children's Villages in his native Ukraine, where one of the six new children's villages under the 6 villages for 2006 campaign will be constructed. This is the first such project of SOS Children's Villages in the country.
The star striker of AC Milan made a special trip to his home country to take part in the filming of the two-minute documentary, in which Shevchenko also plays football with children in Kiev. One of these children is Dimitri, a nine-year-old boy whose parents abandoned him and his younger brother two years ago.
"The first ones who suffer from today's conditions in the Ukraine are the children. Therefore, today it is our obligation to give them the chance to experience their future in a completely different way," added Shevchenko.
Before the gala event for the Final Draw in Leipzig, Germany, football great Roger Milla of Cameroon received his "FIFA for SOS Children's Villages" ambassador certificate in a press event at the exhibition hall in Leipzig.
Milla had contacted SOS Children's Villages the week before the Final Draw to ask how he could provide his support for 6 villages for 2006. Footballer Lucas Radebe of South Africa and former Canadian goalkeeper Craig Forrest, two highly committed "FIFA for SOS Children's Villages" ambassadors, handed Milla the certificate together with Richard Pichler, the Secretary General of SOS Children's Villages, and Federico Addiechi, FIFA's head of Corporate Social Responsibility.
SOS Children's Villages was also present at the Final Draw in the form of an information and promotion stand in the commercial display area of the exhibition hall in Leipzig, which was visited by many prominent guests in the three days leading up to the gala for the Final Draw.
Among the many guests visiting the stand were FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter, German football legend and head of the German World Cup organising committee Franz Beckenbauer, the co-trainer of Germany's national squad Jogi Löw, representatives from the organising committee of the 2010 FIFA World CupTM in South Africa, and many others.