The new docuseries “We Are: The Brooklyn Saints” follows a youth football team in the Big Apple Youth Football Conference as it tries for a national championship. It’s a team that doesn’t have a corporate sponsor. The sponsors are the coaches, parents and community.

Rudy Valdez directs the four-part series for Netflix. Valdez tells George Whipple the group is using football for a brighter future.

“The series is about having a voice and controlling your narrative and really telling a story about a community like East New York. What’s very important is football doesn't use them: They use football. Football is a tool for them to open up more lanes for these kids,” Valdez said.

Those lanes of opportunity include one player’s dream of going into robotics, not the NFL. But it’s his football skills that got him into a good high school that could also help him get into college.

“I wanted to go into an organization into a neighborhood like East New York and show, yes; there are things in the media about East New York that have truth to them. But there are also other truths. And these coaches and players and parents aren't paving this way and doing these wonderful things for their kids despite where they're from: they're doing it because of where they're from,” Valdez said.

"Being from Brooklyn is something that people are extremely proud of. I mean, it's the reason why they're called the Brooklyn Saints. And sometimes they fall hard, and they get beat pretty bad. But what happens is these coaches and these parents say 'Stand up, get ready. Next week we go and fight again."

One of the leaders of “The Brooklyn Saints” is Coach Gawuala. He donates his time and money to the team. He’s using football to give them more opportunities in the real world.

“My motivation is the kids. They bring everything out of me. It is a ticket to college for a lot of these kids. It’s a ticket to get them out of the neighborhood,” Gawuala said.

“I thank God every day I'm in the place I'm in now and I'm able to do what I do for kids and to give back to the community that I come from, a community that everybody says is negative and they try to tear down. It's a beautiful place. You just got to look into the souls of the right people and you'll find it,” said Gawuala.

Valdez told George Whipple that Coach Gawuala was leery to have cameras around him and the team.

“I’m actually a bit reluctant to follow people who are camera-ready and ready to be on camera and spill their guts and tell their story. There's something about me that wants that challenge or wants to follow the people who are a bit more reluctant, and Coach Gawuala was one of the most reluctant at the beginning," said Valdez.

"But you know, I didn't try to get in his face, I simply let him see why we were there. You know, you can tell by the crew that I run and our producers and the way we interact with the kids and the coaches why we're there, I wear my heart on my sleeve the same way Coach Gawuala does. I tell him I'm there to tell a beautiful story."

All four episodes of "We Are: The Brooklyn Saints" are streaming now on Netflix.