Yoshiki Hiruma, one of the young global leaders of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions, wants to make the world a better place by helping the homeless achieve emotional and financial independence through playing soccer.
As a volunteer director of the homeless soccer team "Nobushi Japan," which competed in the 2011 Homeless World Cup in Paris, Hiruma, 31, says that his interest in homeless soccer started from an experience of helping a homeless person sell The Big Issue magazine on the street as part of the volunteer educational program of his banking job. The Big Issue is a publisher that hires homeless people to sell its magazines on the street.
He said that his sense of value fell apart when a homeless person outsold him over a period of three hours, with the homeless person selling 20 copies and Hiruma moving only three.