new sports outreach (our 7th)

our HAN student setting up the warm up
(in 25 degree heat) game!

we currently deliver our sports outreach into 6 different areas including a fruit farm in the elgin valley and last year we were approached by another farm to work with their children. its always hard to balance starting a new club with the greater impact it has on our current sports outreach team, our heart is to bless as many children as possible with this life skills and health awareness based outreach but we need to ensure that anything we do is sustainable, ensuring we are not letting the children down if we have to stop for any reason.

i am glad to say that we felt happy to accept this opportunity to work with this new farm and yesterday we ran the first club there (our 7th club), the site has a large rugby field and some broken netball posts (which we hope to fix to engage the girls in the netball training). the session was led by one of our sports mentors (local young people that we have seen potential in who is now a 'support worker' to the main team) with a HAN student and myself supporting him as he took the children through a simple introductory session. the 10 children who came were aged 13-17 and were very enthusiastic, they will encourage the younger children to come next week to bolster the numbers.

weekly sports planning meeting

after our thursday clubs we have our weekly planning meeting where we discuss how well (or some times not so well) the last week went and we plan the next week of our 40 week programme, we split each group up into the 7 different teams and assigning jobs, from the initial warm up, to the life skill, health talk and bible story. each week has a theme and is linked to a bible verse and life skill application.

this week our meeting was very busy as we were joined to two of our newest sports mentors, from the iraq informal settlement and a couple of older guys who are keen to expand the programme into other areas of grabouw.

it's amazing how God is using us to engage with the children, now over 180, each week, impact their lives with positive messages, providing them with role models and life application skills and sharing God's love with them in a very practical way. as saint francis of assisi was credited with saying....'spread the gospel at all times and use words when nessasary'...this is what we do each and every afternoon and we are so privileged to be able to spend time with these children who come from some of the poorest homes in our community.

jolly hockey sticks

the girls had left before we took this photo!
farm outreach kids with mariana (volunteer)

our recent long term volunteer, simon, donated a wonderful hockey set to our sports outreach programme which we are truly grateful for. last week we used this for the first time in anger at our sports project at a local farm and the children really loved it.

it was great to see both boys and girls playing together, thankfully the sticks and ball are made out of plastic and that saved, what surely would have been, a trip to the local hospital. we will use these again on other afternoons at the 5 other clubs we run, however some of the surfaces are less than conducive than the wonderful grass that the farm children are blessed with.

thanks simon and we hope you like the photo!

sport against crime

a rare corner for grabouw, the boys in blue!

as part of our community outreach i (tim) sit on the grabouw community police forum and on saturday we (the village of hope sports outreach team, our local mentors and our two dutch students from the HAN university) along with the local grabouw police station took a team of fifteen under 14 boys to play in a soccer tourament in cape town. around 16 police stations took part in this event from all over the cape metro and overberg region, the event was all part of the poilce campaign 'sport against crime' and was sponsored by shoprite and coke.

the boys looking a little
dejected after their defeat.

the tournament took place at the santos football club in lansdowne and the well manicured pitches were a little different to those that we are used to practice on in grabouw, in fact it was the first time some of the boys had put a real pair of boots on.

our team of 15 boys were chosen from the 5 different areas that we work in each afternoon, hillside, site view, waterworks, iraq and remhoogte farm in elgin, it was great to see the boys from the different areas come together to play as a team and practice some of the soccer and life skills that we have been working on within our weekly programme. unfortunately we didn't win the tournament but we did have a good time and we hope that next year the other teams will play by the under 14 rule which should enable us to win a few games!

as a prize from us each of the boys was able to keep the chelsea shirts that were donated to us by our good friend matt walker (no relation) which they were very pleased with...thanks matt.

sports clinics

behind the goal during shooting practice in iraq
informal settlement in grabouw 

i think monday and tuesday afternoons are my favorite times of my week, although we run sports clinics for the children in grabouw each and every afternoon in 6 different areas monday and tuesday's are the only two days that i can commit to.

yesterday we had a wonderful time in hillside with around 50 children, both boys and girls, coming to play soccer (sorry football) and netball, and today we had about the same number in the iraq informal settlement. the kids we work with are so precious, many of them come from very difficult family situations, often living with many people in a single room tin shack or breeze block home, but the smiles on their faces when they see our team turn up is what makes the days so special.

this afternoon we were able to share the bible scripture about using the whole armour of God to protect ourselves against the evil that is part of our daily lives and i was able to pray for one little guy who had really bad tooth ache, we stood together and asked God to heal this guy, i pray that our prayers were heard and that his faith in Christ will restore what has been making his life a little tougher.

we see sport as a great medium to engage with the children, this enables us to get along side them, show them respect and teach them in a holistic way ideas that will help their educational, emotional, physical and spiritual growth.....