{"id":4521,"date":"2026-05-28T14:30:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=4521"},"modified":"2026-05-28T14:30:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:30:37","slug":"a-former-ma-lawyer-is-building-the-worlds-biggest-sports-club-one-refugee-camp-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=4521","title":{"rendered":"A former M&A lawyer is building the world’s biggest sports club one refugee camp at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

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At 18, Jan van H\u00f6vell brought a soccer ball to the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana during a 2004 internship with the UN Refugee Agency.\u00a0He said it was a terrible system, just one ball from one intern, and thousands of kids with nothing to do.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was the one bringing my football, and we would play, and we would connect, and we would have good times,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I was also the one bringing my football, and I thought this couldn\u2019t be the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

He studied law, then spent five years in mergers and acquisitions at a top Amsterdam firm\u2014lucrative, prestigious, and completely wrong for him.\u00a0In 2016, he quit and wrote to his contacts at UNHCR, asking:\u00a0\u201cCan you give me a chance to go to a refugee camp and work with the community to find a solution for the lack of sports opportunities in refugee camps?\u201d<\/p>\n

The UN said yes. To pay his bills during the startup phase, van H\u00f6vell moonlighted as a professional DJ at weddings and corporate events while building what would become KLABU, Swahili for \u201cclub,\u201d and formally launched as a foundation in 2019. The social enterprise builds sports clubhouses inside refugee camps: each one is a\u00a0repurposed shipping container outfitted with solar panels, wifi, a TV screen, and a music system. Attached\u00a0to it<\/s>\u00a0is a sports \u201clibrary\u201d where residents borrow equipment, like soccer balls and volleyball nets,\u00a0to chess sets and running shoes, and then return the items so thousands of others can share them.<\/p>\n

The average stay in a refugee camp is 21 years, not two or five as how most people assume, van H\u00f6vell said at the Mews Unfold conference in Amsterdam.\u00a0\u201cChildren are born in refugee camps, they grow up in refugee camps. These are their new homes.\u201d\u00a0With\u00a0120 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, the number still rising. Camps provide schools and water, but almost nothing beyond survival.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need equipment, they need balls, they need nets, they need proper clothing. There are schools, there is water, but there\u2019s not more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faster than van H\u00f6vell expected,\u00a0KLABU\u00a0now runs\u00a010 clubhouses across Kenya, Bangladesh, Jordan, Brazil, and Mauritania. \u201cWe now have 10 of these clubhouses, but what drives us every day is that we have a waiting list of 20,\u201d he said. \u201cWe work with the UN\u00a0and\u00a0UNHCR, and they come to us almost on a weekly basis, and they ask us to come to Mexico, to Uganda, to Zimbabwe, to Malawi. So we have a lot of work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scale challenge is most acute in Bangladesh, home to Cox\u2019s Bazar\u2014the world\u2019s largest refugee camp, housing more than one million Rohingya. There, KLABU partnered with Paris Saint-Germain to deploy a mobile clubhouse that travels through the settlement, because no single fixed location could reach everyone.<\/p>\n

Beyond PSG,\u00a0the adidas Foundation, architecture firm MVRDV, hospitality tech company Mews, and Amsterdam streetwear brand Filling Pieces have all signed on. Mews became the main sponsor of KLABU\u2019s newest location in Boa Vista, Brazil, home to Latin America\u2019s largest shelter for indigenous Venezuelan refugees.<\/p>\n

Part of the funding model involves\u00a0designing and selling sportswear globally, which are\u00a0also worn in the camps.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of them wearing our secondhand Messi shirts, let\u2019s turn the story around,\u201d van H\u00f6vell said. \u201cLet\u2019s have their shirt, their club, so that people can play the game.\u201d Each clubhouse gets its own unique badge and kit, and 50\u00a0percent of sportswear profits flow to the foundation, with full commercial self-sufficiency as the long-term goal.<\/p>\n

In March 2026, KLABU launched a membership program at \u20ac1 per month\u2014exactly what it costs to give one person access to a clubhouse. Van H\u00f6vell\u2019s ambition is to surpass\u00a0Bayern Munich\u2019s 400,000 members\u00a0to make KLABU\u00a0the largest sports club in the world by headcount.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s incredible what you can do with one euro, to give people that sense of community,\u201d he said.\u00a0The 2050 target is bolder still: 300 clubhouses reaching two million refugees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt brings everyone together. It gives that joy, that connection that we all need to not give up, that unbeatable spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

#lawyer #building #worlds #biggest #sports #club #refugee #camp #time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 18, Jan van H\u00f6vell brought a soccer ball to the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana during a 2004 internship with the UN Refugee Agency.\u00a0He said it was a terrible… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54,1548,6904,803,6902,6903,6901,2100,14,1041],"class_list":["post-4521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-biggest","tag-building","tag-camp","tag-club","tag-lawyer","tag-refugee","tag-refugees","tag-sports","tag-time","tag-worlds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}