Commencing the Football World Cup in Brazil with a Message from MAHAK Children

In the last few hours of June 9th 2014, Iranian football lovers and the viewers of the television program “2014” started the World Cup championship with a message from Iranian children diagnosed with cancer to children with cancer all around the world.

Adel Ferdosipour, the popular Iranian host of the ‘90th Minute’ TV sport program along with Carlos Dunga , former Brazilian captain and coach, projected the cancer children on the opening show for the World Cup.

In a program called “A message from Iranian children diagnosed with cancer to children with cancer all around the world”, MAHAK children asked other kids with cancer to fight valiantly with the conviction that: “cancer is not an end to their childhood”.  MAHAK children asked Carlos Dunga to send this message to the world during the largest global event: “kids, we shall all fight cancer so effectively that by defeating it by 2018, we will win the next cup.”

Hello Kids,

We are the kids with cancer in Iran and we are writing this because we have something very important to say to children around the world. We know that “Cancer is not the end “and we know that it’s not important which of our teams wins in the world cup, because we will have fun. What is important is that we kids are champions and in the fight with cancer will score many goals.

We are very happy because we are getting ready for the world cup. We play what we call “serum football” in the hospital hallways because we ride our serum stands playing football. Our doctors and nurses will watch football with us. We are very happy our team is in the world cup and we will have a lot of fun.

Carlos Dunga will come visit us today.  We will call him Uncle Carlos. His football is very good and was the Capitan of the Brazil football team. Now that Uncle Carlos is coming to Brazil and everyone from around the whole world is coming to Brazil we write this letter so Uncle Carlos can read it to everyone.

We learned that we have to fight with cancer until the day we win because we are all champions. Just like football players who are champions. You can be from any country like us in I ran, fight and need to keep telling cancer that it needs to go away so it will listen to us.

Kids, we shall all fight cancer so effectively that by defeating it by 2018, we will win the next cup.

Take care of yourselves

From Children of MAHAK

The first match of the 2014 world cup began using the colorful balls similar to the ones presented to MAHAK children by Adel Ferdosipour and Carlos Dunga as gifts.  The cancer-stricken children, Ferdosipour and Dunga welcomed the World Cup championship games with a symbolic match.  MAHAK children were hosting guests from Brazil, the country that is hosting the championship games in 2014.  At the end of the match, MAHAK kids received the symbolic championship trophy as a gift from the guests.  The children also gave their football drawings to Adel as a token of appreciation in return.

MAHAK has always been grateful to the people whose trust and kindness have been the biggest support for the children with cancer.  The presence and support of Adel Ferdosipour and Carlos Dunga during one of the most important events in their careers, the football World Cup, shows that MAHAK is built upon love and the omnipresence of its supporters and that they never forget their moral and human responsibilities under any circumstances.

We all hope that one day, with the continuing love and support of such people, we can celebrate the victory of all cancer-stricken children against cancer.