CREATING PROSPECTS FOR SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN

• Combatting child poverty
• Promoting integration and international understanding
• Using sport as a means to achieve these goals

Your path through life is guided by many things: Family and friends, your own will and initiative, the support of others, and naturally luck and whether you stay in good health. Time and again, though, it’s a question of chance. The chances you get, and the chances you seize.

But how can you seize a chance that you don’t get in the first place?! Lukas Podolski, who arrived in Germany with his family as a two-and-a-half-year-old, with no knowledge of the language and not a penny in his pocket, now enjoys a privileged life thanks to football and the happiness found in a professional playing career. But he has never forgotten his roots. And the desire to give something back is great - something he would like to do via the Lukas Podolski Foundation.

Most important for him is to open up prospects for socially disadvantaged children. The chances of a good life are not evenly distributed, whatever country or social level you’re born into. Creating awareness of this is what Lukas Podolski wants to use his celebrity status for, raising funds via his foundation for sporting and educational projects. Projects which can be clearly seen to help socially disadvantaged children make their way in society via sport and education.