our 9th sports outreach starts to provide themba to those in hillside!

following quickly on from our eighth club comes the news that we have been able to set up, or at least reestablish, our ninth sports club. this 'new' club is run in an area called 'hillside' and whilst this was an area where we have worked before we did have to merge two clubs together about two years ago and the children from hillside were expected to be picked up and transported to siteview.

although siteview is less that a mile away from hillside and should be within walking distance for those children they are from different cultural backgrounds and felt slightly 'excluded' from the merged club. therefore it is with great joy that we have been able to reestablish their original club, which has been running for a couple of weeks now, and we are seeing lots of boys and girls attend this club which takes place each and every monday afternoon.

we want to thank themba (yes that's the name of one of our mentors..obviously meaning 'hope') for his enthusiasm for reestablishing this club which is in the area where he lives and therefore he is continuing to be a role model to the younger children who attend his club...well done themba!

our 8th sports club starts.....in the rain!

aphiwe leading the first soccer based lifeskills club
in marikana informal settlement

there is such need in our community and it would be easy to have a scatter gun approach to all the issues that we see and are confronted with on a daily basis, however we are keen to ensure the sustainability of any project that we start and therefore planning and preparation has been the key to our success. 

aphiwe (front) with the boys at our new sports outreach

this approach can be seen as we have developed our sports outreach over the last few years, and within this blog post we are pleased to announce that not only have we taken on two new sports mentors (local young adults from the communities we work in who provide that peer to peer education) but have increasing our clubs from the first one we set up in october 2008 which met the needs of about 20 boys aged about 13 to now our eighth club which sees us work over 400 children each week from the youngest under three's all the way through to boys and girls aged 15 and 16 years.

the new club was the dream of a new mentor (aphiwe) which has been set up in the marikana informal settlement, which sits between two of our existing clubs in north pineview and iraq. aphiwe is being supported by three of our long term mentors as he develops his skills and encourages the children who live around his home to come join the club which is taking place each and every wednesday afternoon.

unfortunately the weather didn't play ball for the first week session, however the overcast and rainy conditions didn't stop around 15 boys attending the new club and we are excited to see if we could introduce a netball club to engage with the local girls at the same location.

the success of our clubs is proof that we provide the knowledge and skills to enable the mentors to run their own clubs, in fact this is the second club where the mentors have taken on the whole running of the club without the need for us to attend at all, this is fantastic news and shows that the input that we have had with these mentors (who have all attended our various clubs as children themselves) is working and sustainable!

new sports outreach starts in xolanaledi

i am feeling a little frustrated at the moment as my laptop has had a big breakdown so i am having to use other computers to post on the blog and uploading photos, even a simple task like completing our village of hope internet banking is providing difficult as i don't want to sync my cell phone with devices that i'm not going to be using in the future, however that said i have found a way of posting this blog and i am so encouraged about the story that i am prepared to work around my technical challenges!

we have been so busy over the last few weeks, which you will have read about in our august newsletter and even today we are wanting to share about the new landscaping that is taking place around the entrance to the project as well as another birthday party, the end of which is still taking place as i write this (i can hear the music to the 'pass the parcel' as i type), however the photos and stories around those items will have to wait for another day as i am wanting to update you all on the wonderful news about our new sports outreach club which started today.

our four sports mentors full equipped to run
 their new club

as you will be aware we are having a huge impact on over 250 children each week, those are the 9-15 year olds who attend our older club, there are hundreds of little ones, aged two to eight who have been ably entertained by boniface who looks after those children, with our bible based sports outreach and lifeskills programme. the main area of growth over the last year has been with our local 'sports mentors'/'peer to peer educators' who we have developed to assist and even run some of the more established groups.

the mentors sharing the lifeskill and bible story to
over 20 new boys who joined them at the new club

today was a real testimony to how well the new sports mentors are doing as i challenged them to seek a new area where they could run their own club, with our full backing and support (both physically with the sports equipment and spiritually with our continued mentoring programme towards them), so it was with great joy that i dropped off four of the mentors to an open piece of ground, equipped with their bible cards, footballs, training bibs and cones.

the sight of over 20 children joining the guys for the training session, which they led from start to finish, warm up, drills, lifeskill and bible story, was amazing and i must thank them for their dedication to see the very programme which has bought them to this point in their life being shared by them to the younger children in the community.

i am very proud of them and this is a real testimony to all the hard work we have put into the clubs and the lives of these young people, well done boys!

a new area for our sports outreach

first week at our new north pineview club

you may be aware that we run sports outreach clubs to over 250 children each week and over the last 18 months we have been working at a second local farm providing our life skills and health awareness via sport programme to their children, however due to other commitments, such as school work and family commitments we have only been getting between five to 10 children at each club.

we know that each child is special and needs to be given the same chance but we had to reevaluate our resource and we felt that traveling over 50 minutes there and back on a thursday afternoon was not a good use of time, petrol or money so it is with sadness that we say goodbye to those wonderful children. we trust that our impact will be long lasting and if we were able to employ a full-time sports outreach coordinator we are sure that this could open up again.

but as with anything as one door closes then another opens and our sports mentors from the informal areas of town were keen to start another club to serve the children from the zola/north pineview end of the informal settlement which is continuing to extend due to the building works in rooidakke.

therefore it is great news to announce that we now have a new club, which has been running for two weeks and is already attracting over 40 children, the space we run the club from is very limited and has been littered with glass and dog poo however there are patches of grass which we thank God for!

We pray that these children will benefit from the weekly clubs which are designed to provide them with some basic physical exercise, as well as providing them with skills which will help them to grow into well balanced human beings who are keen to work together for a brighter south africa.