So he says this to this guy and the guy looks at him and says, 'No. And Tim thought, oh OK, we’ll tell the people we’re trying to sell the ball to so they understand, but we won’t stress that. And Tim said, 'Well how are they working?' and he said, 'Oh, the kids love them.' And Tim said 'Now, did they try and destroy them?' Because he’d been told by people who work with kids, look, don’t tell the kids that this ball is indestructible, because they’ll keep trying to destroy it. They weren’t quite as good as the later models. He said, 'Oh, we have the red balls in our camp.' And he started talking about it. GK: Because a year later he ran into a man - I think he was visiting another site where the ball had been delivered - and he ran into a man who said he worked in the camps and who described the original prototypes, which were red. How did Tim Jahnigen know that his invention had been a hit? Get to work on this.' And within a year, he had a prototype which was faster and actually less expensive than he expected it to be.īL: You write about how the ball has been received in a camp in Rwanda dedicated to the rehabilitation of child soldiers. You need to work on this.' And he said, 'Well, I’ve got all my money in another thing.' And Sting said, 'No, no, no, I’ll fund this. And he just threw it out there and Sting said, 'Wait a minute, you think you can design a ball that doesn’t go flat?' And he said, 'Yes.' He goes, 'Well, then you need to do it right away. Tim mentioned that he had this brainchild and that he had been thinking about for two years.

Tim Jahnigen also is a music producer, and he worked with Sting and his wife on the Rainforest Foundation project, one of the concerts they did. But a lot of them will have heard of his partner in this project, right? He's a Californian, and most of our listeners won't have heard of him. He's the man who figured out the One World Football. This man, who does not play soccer, sat down and designed it because he was so concerned that kids weren’t getting to play, and he considered it such a vital part of our lives.īL: The man of whom you're speaking is Tim Jahnigen. This man sat down and designed a football. This is really supposed to be used on gravel, on dirt. And the inventors told me that they’re not trying to compete with the people who manufacture soccer balls for the World Cup or high-level competitions, balls that are supposed to be used on grass and turf. It’s supposedly less bouncy than a regular soccer ball because it’s going to be used on hard surfaces. What's the ball look like and what does it feel like to kick one? Or they’ll make their own balls out of rocks, out of rags, old pieces of trash that they tie together with twine, things like that.īL: So the solution to the problem is a ball called the One World Futbol. They’ll end up putting them aside deflated. So a lot of kids over there in Africa and Haiti will not be able to play with these soccer balls for very long. Or as they deflate, the people who are using them don’t have pumps to reinflate them.

In places in Africa, they’re used in places where they have lots of really, really strong thorns, and they break, some of them almost immediately. GK: In refugee camps, in a lot of places overseas, in Haiti, for example, after the earthquake, the soccer balls are used on really hard surfaces. She joined Bill Littlefield for a chat.īL: First, tell us a little about why the donation of normal soccer balls hasn't always worked out. For the website Sports on Earth, Gwen Knapp has written about a ball built to solve that problem. In many parts of the world, keeping a leather ball inflated just isn't practical. The good intentions of those inclined to donate soccer balls to children in refugee camps and poverty-stricken villages have often been foiled by circumstances beyond their control. These colorful spheres don't need to be pumped, making it possible to play the beautiful game anywhere. (Jeff Chiu/AP) Twitter facebook Email This article is more than 9 years old.

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