Thousands of people attended the World Cup games in Foxboro during the opening rounds of the tournament. Most of them didn’t know where they needed to go. Fortunately, volunteers were there to show them the way, including two members of the MGH Institute community.  

Chief Health Equity and Community Excellence Officer Dr. Kim Truong and Genetic Counseling student Sam Silverman were on hand at several games. Silverman worked with fan operations, directing people to the security checkpoint from the Patriot Place shops during the three hours before the game started. 

Dr. Truong was a host city ambassador and was teamed with three others who helped fans heading back to Boston via the commuter rail for all seven games.

“I have had the opportunity to chat with fans from all over the world, sing with the Tartan army, cheer up fans whose teams lost, and help fans who are lost find where they are supposed to be,” explained Truong. “It has been great meeting volunteers — I was regularly scheduled to work with a couple of volunteers from Sanofi, one who was French and another person who was Brazilian and a college professor who was Chinese.” 

While most of her time was spent outside the stadium, she did have the chance to see one of the biggest upsets of the tournament as Paraguay beat Germany 4-3 in a penalty shootout.