This TackleAfrica project was delivered in partnership with FRACODEP (St Francis Community Development Programme), delivering HIV education and awareness to young people in Kisumu and Siaya.

Kisumu is a large town on the edge of Lake Victoria with a number of large outlying communities with poor resources.

Siaya is smaller town in a more rural area, but is an administrative centre with outlying villages in the countryside.

The coaches on this project were Neil Peters, Paul Peters, Chris Clapham and Adrian Moorhead from the UK and TackleAfrica trained coach Nelson Wanyama from another partner organisation SAIPEH (Support Activities in Poverty Eradication and Health).

This was the third successive year that TackleAfrica have partnered with FRACODEP.  The project followed up work that TackleAfrica undertook in 2009 when they trained a number of coaches and teaches to deliver HIV education and awareness through football using TackleAfrica coaching manual.

The 2010 follow up project looked to build on the success of the 2009 project, to see how the local coaches were delivering the drills from the manual to their teams, and to demonstrate new drills from the new 2010 World Cup addition of the TackleAfrica coaching manual.

The project was split into two week segments, with the first week working with teams in Siaya, and the second in Kisumu.

Each week followed a similar pattern which involved coaching teams and youth groups during the week, and talking to teachers and coaches about the new TackleAfrica manual.

At the end of each work there was a football tournament which FRACODEP used as a method of community engagement and for raising awareness of HIV issues.  Voluntary HIV testing and counselling staff were available at the tournament in Siaya and players were encouraged to find out their HIV status through these services.  TackleAfrica coaches were also on hand to provide advice on football and to give information on HIV issues.

The project was a useful way of delivering HIV education and awareness to young people by engaging them outside of the class room through football.  The football coaching drills in the TackleAfrica manual are good for coaching football in their own right, but they also contain a useful HIV message within them.

Football is extremely popular in Kenya and the TackleAfrica model is a great way of engaging communities to deliver these valuable and life saving messages to the people that we work with.

The TackleAfrica team on this project were also able to meet new contacts in Kenya, with the possibility of partnering with them on future projects.  These included KYFA (Kisumu Youth Football Association) that operates a large football league in Kisumu and has access to around 80 teams and coaches.

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