00:00In Melbourne's Inner West, a Saturday footy match is bringing people together.
00:07This is the third year of the annual East vs West Community Tournament.
00:13Celebrate our culture, bring unity and really showcase the amazing people
00:18and the work that the African community have been doing in Australia for a long time.
00:22A day where sport, music and mentorship come together to empower and rewrite the headlines.
00:38Most of the time when we're doing well we're Australian but then when we're doing negative we're Africans.
00:43They hope the day will inspire kids to join their local footy club and seek out NextGen for support.
00:49For many families here the stakes are bigger than the game.
00:53The recent deaths of Dao Aking and Chol Acek have shaken the community.
00:58The coaches here say what keeps kids out of trouble isn't punishment, it's purpose.
01:04We're hoping by making all this quite public they know that it's here and they know the kind of people to reach out to as well.
01:11Leaders here say what they need is a long term funding commitment
01:15to make sure that events like this can continue to showcase talent and bring people together for years to come.
01:22We've got little siblings who are 5 years now, they're going to get to 10, they're going to get to 15
01:27and by the time they're 18 they're going to feel confident, they're going to feel like they're accepted in the community
01:32and they're going to do great things.
01:33You know we see that there's quite a lot of AFL players that are South Sudanese right?
01:37But we're seeing not much support at the grassroots level.
01:41Every cheer a small win for a community determined to change the story.
01:46You know we've got the things set are in place to go to us with this because we need to show up,
01:53which was the primary care of the tour to our vision at this point.
01:55With a team has never reached any longer as we can see it.
01:57Theäche of Col我覺得 took a long time to wrap up aIslanders
01:59of hero's work, they kind of don't let us see an individualist,
02:13group of priests and people, they basically took an ambiguity.
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