By DeJongh “Dee” Wells, Co-Founder of Protect Our Culture & SOLEcial Studies Community Academy
Two weeks from now, the world kicks off.
I mean that literally — on June 11, the FIFA World Cup opens at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, and for the next 39 days, 16 cities across the United States, Mexico, and Canada will become the center of the planet.
And if you know me — from OSD, from SOLEcial Studies, from Protect Our Culture — then you already know I don’t see this as just a soccer tournament.
I see it as a cultural moment. A people’s moment. A commUNITY moment.
We’ve Been Here Before. But Not Like This.
In 1994, the World Cup came to America for the first time. Nine cities. Retrofitted football stadiums. A country that welcomed the tournament with genuine curiosity — but still wasn’t sure what to do with it.
Soccer was a guest back then. It was politely received and quickly moved on.
Thirty-two years later? Soccer lives here now. It grew up here. It went to school here. It plays in parks and rec leagues in Third Ward and Five Points and Boyle Heights and Little Havana.
The 1994 World Cup planted a seed. 2026 is the harvest.
The Energy in These Cities Is Real
I’m based in Houston — one of the 11 U.S. host cities — and I’m telling you, you can feel it already. The flags. The conversations. The way people who never talked about soccer are suddenly asking you to explain the offside rule.
From AT&T Stadium in Dallas hosting 94,000 fans to Hard Rock Stadium in Miami — surrounded by the most football-passionate communities in the country — to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey hosting the Final on July 19, these cities aren’t just venues. They’re stages for something much bigger.
Fan zones in Times Square. Cultural activations in parks and plazas. Neighborhoods lighting up with the flags of 48 nations.
This isn’t just a tournament happening in North America. This time, North America is the tournament.
This Is What SOLEcial Studies Has Always Been About
When the SOLEcial Studies Community Academy was built— using sneaker culture as the hook to teach STEAM to young people in underserved communities — we did it because we understood something fundamental:
Culture is the greatest classroom there is.
The World Cup is proof of that at scale. Billions of people united by a sport. By a kit. By a badge on a chest. By a moment when the ball hits the back of the net and everyone in the stadium…regardless of language, regardless of background feels the exact same thing.
That’s what we’re trying to recreate every single day with our students. That electricity. That shared identity. That sense that your culture, your story, your people….they matter.
When kids in Houston watch Lionel Messi or Trinity Rodman or a player wearing their home country’s colors on a world stage, they don’t just see a soccer player. They see a possibility. They see themselves.
That’s the lesson.
Protect Our Culture Was Built For This
Here’s what I know that nobody talks about enough:
The World Cup creates moments. Moments like families together in living rooms, like neighborhoods celebrating in the streets, like grandfathers explaining how they watched Pelé in 1970…those moments are the stories we carry forever.
Or the ones we forget to record.
Protect Our Culture exists because I lost my father Winston when I was seventeen years old, and I never got to ask him the questions that matter. His story, in his own voice, is a silence I carry every single day.
This World Cup? It’s going to create millions of those moments.
The grandfather who played football in Lagos and is now watching his grandson in New Jersey wearing the same Super Eagles kit. The abuela in Miami who remembers watching El Tri from a black-and-white TV in Mexico City and is now in the stadium with her grandchildren. The first-generation family from El Salvador watching their home country compete for the first time in decades.
Those are the stories worth protecting.
So, pull out your phone. Press record. Ask the questions.
Not just during the tournament…..start now. While the excitement is building. While the memories are being made. While the people who shaped you are still here.
14 Days.
The world is about to show up on our doorstep — in Houston, in Dallas, in Miami, in New York, in LA, in Kansas City, in Seattle, in Atlanta, in Boston, in Philadelphia, in San Francisco.
And for 39 days, culture is going to be on full display.
Protect it. Document it. Learn from it and teach from it.
That’s what SOLEcial Studies does. That’s what Protect Our Culture was built for. See you on the pitch. Download the Family Story Interview Guide at ProtectOurCulture.com. Learn more about SOLEcial Studies Community Academy at SOLEcialStudies.com.
Protect Our Culture — Stories 