village of hope sports mentors do thembalitsha proud....again!

shep and aphiwe with their
player of the tournament trophies

on saturday josh (our international volunteer who has been with us for over a year) took eight of our sports mentors to a football tournament in worcester. this has become an annual event and once again the boys were up early as josh made the hour long trip through the beautiful mountain scenery to attend this event which was hosted and organised by our friends at solid rock.

it is so good to write up this post which follows on from the same theme as last years, which can be read by clicking on the link here, as our boys once again performed with incredible consistency winning 10 of their 11 games and drawing the other one.....over the last two years we have now played 18 won 16, drawn two and have yet to lose a match!

i'm not sure any of us can really appreciate the tough lives these amazing mentors live, not all of them have brick homes, some of them live without basic sanitation and have to walk to collect their water, many of them have no father figures in their lives and by looking at the photo of them you will see that many of them had to borrow the very trainers, not even football boots, to play in.

wearing your shirts back to front is apparently the way
to win tournaments these days!

the results of the games speak for themselves but the fact that one of our boys won the player of the tournament for the second year in a row and this year our goalkeeper was recognised for his sterling performances by winning the 'best goalkeeper' award is also amazing news.

however all of this pales into insignificance as we can boast about these eight amazing boys, as well as the other mentors who make up our daily sports outreach team, the dedication and commitment that these school boys make as they give up their precious weekday afternoons to be the peer educators to the children living in the informal settlements in grabouw is simple fantastic, these boys have really tough lives and live in the very areas where we work each afternoon, so whether the boys had won the tournament on saturday or not really isn't the point, these guys are true hero's to us as a team here at the village of hope and are really an inspiration to the hundreds of children that we work with each and every weekday afternoon.

you guys make us so proud and it's an honour to work with you, well done!