The Black Pearls have many reasons to celebrate these holidays, after a year of hard work, victories, new achievements and exciting challenges ahead. The football team created by Viva Rio in Haiti to generate social impact has found consecration in Rio, with local and refugee athletes seeing their dreams of raising the trophy come true.
The team won the Rio Football Championship’s C-Series in their first time in a professional competition. With a precise and clean game, the nine Haitians and XX Brazilians players gained access to the B-Series, which they will play next year, facing tougher enemies but with the same drive that took them this far.
The Black Pearls were also the big winners in the U-20 category of the same championship, playing with young athletes from Haiti and Brazil. All of them live, practice and study at the Black Pearls Academy in Paty do Alferes, in the State of Rio.
The success of the Black Pearls this year is also a symbol of social inclusion, diversity embrace and fair play. Besides the main competition, the football team won the award of Most Disciplined Team in Rio’s Championship, with only two red cards unrelated to physical violence in the entire competition.
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