FOOTBALL4GOOD MAGAZINE | MARCH 2020

A CONVERSATION WITH WILLIAM TROOST- EKONG IN ACTION TO HELP ERADICATE NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES HOW THE PLAYER FOR UDINESE AND THE NIGERIAN NATIONAL TEAM IS USING HIS MEMBERSHIP OF COMMON GOAL TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN NIGERIA. Before joining Common Goal in March 2018, Wiliam Troost-Ekong admits that he knew nothing about neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The term refers to a diverse set of parasitic and bacterial infectious diseases that affect more than 1.7 billion of the world’s most impoverished people – among them are over 1 billion children. The player for Italian club Udinese and the Nigerian National Team learned that, every year, thousands of people are still dying from diseases that can be prevented. He also found out that 600 million people in Africa need treatment for neglected tropical diseases, 120 million alone in Nigeria, the birth country of his father. The 26-year-old centre-back decided to become part of the collaborative effort to tackle this issue through his membership of Common Goal. In 2018, Common Goal and streetfootballworld had teamed up with The END Fund, a private philanthropic initiative with the sole purpose of ending the most common tropical diseases. Through this alliance, a project was launched in collaboration with local football-based organisations Youth Empowerment Development Initiative (YEDI) in Nigeria and Espérance in Rwanda to inform at-risk communities about NTDs and to provide them with the treatment they need. We speak to William Troost-Ekong about how he is using his platform as a footballer to ensure that many more people are informed about NTDs, how he initially became involved in Common Goal, and what his vision is for building on the first chapter of his engagement with the movement in the decade ahead.