ABOUT

FIFA came to us with a socially compelling brief: to lead creative production on a series of animated films for Football for Schools, a global mass participation programme designed to contribute to the education, development and empowerment of boys and girls aged 4 to 14, with a key focus on accessibility and inclusivity.

For the first time, F4S partnered with FIFA Medical to incorporate health awareness and wellbeing, with the aim of enhancing health literacy, safety awareness and well-being through content accessible to all children regardless of language literacy, culture or socio-economic background.

The creative brief was to produce a highly visual, football-themed animated series that communicates through imagery rather than words alone, removing language as a barrier to learning. The challenge was to ensure serious subject matter including medical education, mental health and wellbeing was delivered in a compelling and familiar way that resonates with the largest possible number of children worldwide.

The scope was substantial: 11 animated films, 11 printable infographics and 11 teaching guides, structured across three distinct age groups (4–7, 8–11 and 12–14) and subtitled in eight languages including Arabic, Kirghiz and Tajik. Total delivered animation came to 24 minutes, covering subjects ranging from handwashing and dental hygiene through to CPR, mental health and menstrual health. A 30-second trailer was also produced for FIFA's social channels.

Scripts, character design, storyboards and full animation were all completed in-house over nine months by a team of five. The project required close collaboration with FIFA stakeholders and alignment with WHO recommendations and UN Sustainable Development Goals, while remaining practically deployable in low-resource school and community settings globally.

Two creative challenges ran in parallel throughout. First, ensuring the tone and depth of information was correct for each age group. What works for a seven-year-old learning about handwashing requires a completely different register to a fourteen-year-old navigating mental health. Second, finding a meaningful creative thread back to football for every subject, regardless of how distant the topic might initially seem from the game.

The solution was three distinct character worlds: jungle animals for the youngest age group, designed to be friendly and non-threatening, and relatable human characters for the middle and older groups who could model behaviours more directly. Each series had its own visual language and voice, including sourcing appropriate voiceover talent across all three age ranges, with subtitling then applied across eight languages to maximise global reach.

Football gave children a familiar, trusted context in which to encounter unfamiliar or sensitive subjects, and gave educators and coaches a natural hook into discussions that might otherwise feel outside their remit.

How it made a difference.
The series has reached 1.6 million views on YouTube alone and sits within the Football for Schools Programme infrastructure across 153 countries, giving teachers and coaches direct access as classroom and training resources.

The impact has been most visible in the CPR content. Children who watched the Heart Heroes United episode were able to perform CPR at the correct pace and technique with almost no additional instruction. The animation alone was sufficient to transfer a potentially life-saving skill to primary school-age children. In communities with limited access to formal first aid training, a child who can perform effective CPR is a child who could one day save a life.

The series is also being activated at FIFA Fan Festivals across five host cities, with a CPR hands-only initiative underway using the infographics and potentially the films directly. Its modular structure means it continues to find new contexts beyond its original deployment, in schools, coaching programmes and community health settings worldwide.