The Alive & Kicking Orphanage World Cup aimed to give 500 orphans and vulnerable children in the city of Lusaka access to organised football and netball competitions and at the same time provide life skills training and HIV/AIDS sensitisation. A series of mini leagues were held over a 6 month period and were followed by a World Cup style tournament running over two weeks and culminating in a thrilling final on August 28^th. During the mini-leagues, health awareness coaching sessions were conducted with participating teams.

A total of 450 footballs and netballs have been donated, over 500 children have received HIV/AIDS awareness, and 109 coaches and teachers have received training on how to disseminate HIV/AIDS awareness through sport. In a city where there are limited opportunities for the most vulnerable children to take part in organised sport, this project has been received with gratitude and smiles by children and their teachers and coaches alike.

TackleAfrica’s Ben Sadler, the Project Manager for the A&K Orphanage World Cup has a wealth of experience of organising tournaments around the world. He had the following to say:  

“The league competitions have been very well received. Hundreds of participants have competed and they have been joined by the local community who have come out to support and enjoy the sports on show. The players have not only embraced the competition element but also been open to building their HIV and AIDS knowledge.”

Samuel Sibanda, 17, a participant from Dream Runners Orphanage had his message for Alive & Kicking supporters across the globe,

“I would like to tell you all that we will not let you down because we are united. The league has been one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life and has put smiles on the faces of me and all of my friends. We played well and meeting with different kinds of people made me happy because we cooperated and learnt from one another – lack of knowledge leads many people into bad decision making so the HIV games have helped us a lot”

The final event took place at the Zambian Olympic Youth Development Centre in August. The finals were spread over two weekends to ensure the traditional World Cup knock out format could be implemented. The venue offered safe and fun facilities including a state of the art artificial pitch which was a highlight for many of the participants.

William Kaluba, 15 from Emmasdale OVCs said “I have never seen a pitch like this before. We play in our compound on a small dirt pitch. This is so big and flat – All of the teams are saying the same thing, we all can’t wait to play”

40 teams took part in the event, 16 of which had participated in the regional leagues as the remaining six teams had other commitments. In total 782 participants (128 girls and 654 boys) played in both the netball and football tournaments, with support from 97 coaches, teachers and peer leaders as well as approximately 350 spectators.

Issac Kumwenda, a peer leader from Fountain of Hope Orphanage commented,

“This has been the best tournament we have ever participated in. We played in the regional league and since then I have never seen our boys so motivated. They have come to training every day in preparation for the finals and now they have played on the best pitch in Zambia – The tournament has given the boys hope and excitement – I just hope that an event like this can happen again, I have never seen so many teams play”

Since the event was called the World Cup, each team was given a country to represent. In the football competition, Kalingalinga OVCs won the title, representing Kenya and beating Germany in the final. In the netball, Fountain of Hope, representing Zambia, beat England to be crowned champions.

During the event, as part of Youth Week, participants had access to mobile Voluntary Counselling and Test Centres that were available for use at the Olympic Centre.

Kalingalinga Edusport was one of the four local organisations invited to enter both a football team and a netball team.  They are a branch of Edusport, a national organisation that uses sport to achieve empowerment, health, education and other development goals in communities across Zambia.

James Banda is the team coach and an Edusport peer leader:

“The league is a great chance for our young players to play other local teams and be competitive”

As part of the league each team has participated in HIV health awareness sessions led by a TackleAfrica coach. James felt this was a crucial part of the tournament.

“The football is fun but the children also learn important things about HIV and even I learnt new things. HIV is a big part of life and these TackleAfrica games help the children to know important things that could save them”

Kalingalinga is a compound in the North East of the city. There is a large population of children here, highlighted by the number of participants as well as those who just came down to watch the games and coaching sessions.

Gracious Kaunda is one of the young players to participate. Aged 14, he was very appreciative of the opportunity to play in the tournament and receive information about HIV.

“It has been fun to play with friends but also against them – football is the best thing to do, all my friends play it and we try to be like Barcelona”. With regard to the coaching sessions Gracious commented, “I know more about HIV and hope we learn more again soon”.

The football league was eventually won by Lutanda Academy and the netball trophy was awarded to Kalingalinga Edusport. They will all meet again at the World Cup Finals in August

TackleAfrica Coaches:
Joe Payne, Neil Peters, Tatyana Dimitrova, Richard Silverton, Stephen Findlay

Project Description

(i) Kabwe
Date: October 2009
For the first 2 weeks of the project, TackleAfrica coaches Joe Payne and Neil Peters visited Kabwe to further develop the TackleAfrica coaching education programme as well as support the coaches who had been trained the previous year. In the long term Tackle Africa hopes to support a group of local coaches of youth teams that were represented at this and last year’s courses.

During the first week of the project Joe and Neil ran a refresher course for some of the coaches that attended last year’s course, focusing on drills that the local coaches had not yet implemented into their coaching activities as well as giving further guidance and support to the drills they were currently using. In the second week, Joe and Neil ran a 3-day coaching course for 25 new coaches who had not attended the previous year. Some coaches from the refresher course also attended to gain further experience. The main focus in this week was delivering the drills from the manual, running HIV education workshops and giving the local coaches opportunities to practice and demonstrate the drills with comprehensive feedback and evaluation from Joe and Neil.

Joe and Neil also facilitated the inaugural meeting of the league for Kabwe, including elections. The rules for the election meant that those from last year’s TackleAfrica course could be voted onto an executive committee, and then they could draw up a constitution and appoint/elect a larger committee to support them.

(ii) Lusaka
Date: October 2009
Following on from the pilot project last year, TackleAfrica coaches Tatyana Dimitrova, Richard Silverton and Stephen Findlay visited Lusaka to work with Breakthrough Sports Academy (BSA).

Established in 2003, its main objective is to introduce young Zambians to sport at the community level and to offer kids a chance to play the sport they appreciate the most. Through some of its programs, BSA incorporates life skills messages – especially in relation to HIV/AIDS – into sports to make the academy an arena for learning and developing as an individual. It is hoped that the development and the hard work that have characterized the early stages of the academy will continue in the future. In addition, through the academy’s outreach programs, children are involved in Community environmental clean ups.

In October 2007, BSA launched the Zambia Street Football Network (ZSFN) along with other TackleAfrica partners Bauleni United Sports Academy, Kalim Sports Council and Grassroot Soccer. The general goal of the national network is to share experiences and lessons learnt in the field of Development through Football. It is hoped that they can better organise exciting sports and recreational activities for children and youth through sustainable networking. The major focus of the network is sharing different experiences and best practices as well as working together on joint projects.

Over a 2-week period the TackleAfrica coaches visited several sites around Lusaka including; Bauleni, Northmeads, Garden Site, and Kalim working with our partners in the ZSFN. The main purpose was to continue the work from the previous year, working with the children and educating them about HIV through our uniquely designed football drills in the TackleAfrica coaching manual.

As well as running coaching sessions, the TackleAfrica coaches were involved in the coordination and running of 3 separate football tournaments during their time in Lusaka with around 300 children taking part. This also provided an opportunity to engage with the children and use the TackleAfrica coaching manual with them. The coaches also spent a considerable amount of time with BSA and the other partners, away from the football pitch running very useful workshops on Budgeting, Finance and IT greatly adding value to our partners and the impact that TackleAfrica can have with them on future projects.

Three Tackle Africa coaches visited Kabwe in October 2008; Kabwe is a town characterised most perhaps by its once booming copper mining industry, and now a place short on jobs, and struggling with high HIV infection rates and young people not unlike youngsters in the UK, turning to drink, drugs and sexual activity for excitement.

The Kabwe project used a day centre for vulnerable street kids (Sables) as a base; its situated right next to a community pitch used by a lot of local teams. We aimed to achieve two major objectives; firstly to run a coaching clinic for local football coaches, thus training them to deliver the Tackle Africa HIV related training drills to a high coaching standard and with clear HIV messaging, and second to foster relationships that could mean Tackle Africa’s model of reaching young people through football could continue and grow after our departure.

The coaches visiting Kabwe brought their own unique experiences to the table, Tim Newsome as a UEFA B level coach and Charlie McGrath, an experienced project worker in Zambia and also someone able to coach netball and reach Zambian girls in a country where ladies football is not yet as popular as elsewhere in Africa.

We achieved the objectives; not only did the coaches come together to learn the drills, we have formed a forum of local coaches representing ten junior sides, who will continue to meet and share coaching practice and innovations in HIV drills. A proposed Tackle Africa ‘Play Safe’ Youth League is also in the offing, and several new drills have been designed by local coaches.

Lusaka

The second half of the trip, to Lusaka (with potential partners Breakthrough Sports Academy who support youth football in Lusaka’s poorer districts) played out a bit differently, but ultimately with similar outcomes. The coaches involved, Ele Lewis, Clive Fogleman and Gudrun Jevne, again ran a coaching clinic, though in the absence of an organised local partner.

We ran the sessions using paper and marker pen, blu-tacked to a wall next to a community pitch, and managed to run 3 days worth of coaching clinics, reaching out to football coaches from five different areas of Lusaka (often with large crowds of schoolkids peering over their shoulders). We visited the sites where the local coaches coached, community pitches in or just outside the local ‘compounds’ that people live in, and were able to introduce the training sessions to large groups of under 10s to under 19s and also assess the local coaches delivering Tackle Africa drills.

We were also involved in three ‘Independence Day’ football tournaments, where we ran sessions for teams who were in between games, and presented awards, particularly focussing on the players’ involvement with the Tackle Africa workshops in between games.

While a future partner did not emerge from this leg of the trip, the coaches who attended the course fedback positively and a short trip was able to reach a very large target audience, confirming I believe that a model that empowers local coaches is Tackle Africa’s most effective means of creating a sustainable impact on young people. Where we can back this up by supporting ongoing football events, or giving the youngsters chance to play competitively, and train with a peer group that supports each other, it is clear that the impact of the HIV training drills carries on beyond the football session and informs the lives of many young people.

The trip also enabled us to formalise a coaching clinic ‘curriculum’ with valuable feedback from local coaches on what was most needed for them to continue to spread the messages of healthy living through high quality football coaching.