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Sport and fitness for today’s youth
September 2010 £2.75
Footballs help spread the sports message By Louise Cordell SCHOOLS around the UK are being given the chance to use sport to improve the lives of some of the world’s most disadvantaged children. UK charity, The Great Football Giveaway, are calling on teachers and pupils to get involved in providing much-needed sports equipment for African schools. The project involves not just raising funds, but getting involved in distributing footballs and netballs to schools, youth groups and orphanages and building long term partnerships. Volunteers have already headed out into some of the poorest areas of Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia handing out balls, and changing the lives of local children. Paul Clarke and his wife Sarah set up the charity after seeing the lack of facilities available for kids when they were travelling in Africa. He said: “We saw a football match that was attended by everyone from two villages, but they just had one old ball that deflated every time it was kicked. The younger kids had made their own balls out of rags, plastic and string, and we couldn’t
help thinking – wouldn’t it be great if we could come back with some real balls for them – and it all escalated from there.” The charity is looking for schools who have seen the benefits that sport brings to their own pupils and who want to help provide the same opportunities for others. A school in Gloucestershire has already got involved and is now working in partnership with a ‘twinned’ school in Rwanda. Paul added: “All the pupils in the Gloucestershire school drew pictures of life in England and each signed a football with a message to a Rwandan child; then, in Rwanda the pupils did the same thing for the English kids. It has given the school a great chance to build an ongoing relationship and, more importantly, one that is led by the children, not the teachers. “Sport is such a fantastic connector – most English children will have trouble understanding the hardships caused by HIV or lack of water, but they can imagine a school that is so poor it doesn’t even have a football – and they want to be a part of the solution.” Full story, Page 16
Scheme on track for 2010
Pupils at Beech Hill Primary School in Calderdale received a visit from Olympic mascot Wenlock after winning a nationwide competition. Beech Hill Primary was one of just 12 schools from across the UK chosen to receive a visit and a group of pupils performed a street dance routine with the mascot for the rest of the school Schools and colleges registered with Get Set, the 2012 education programme, were able to enter the competition to win the prize by telling Wenlock and Mandeville about how their pupils have benefited from sport. For more information see Page 9
THE London 2012 International Inspiration programme, which takes sport to young people worldwide, has now reached six million children in challenging situations. Three of Britain’s most famous Olympians, Sebastian Coe, Dame Kelly Holmes and Sir Steve Redgrave, have visited a participating New Delhi school to celebrate the milestone. This means that the scheme is now on target to reach 12m young people in 20 countries by 2012. Seb Coe, chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee, said: “International Inspiration –the programme we committed to in Singapore in 2005 when we presented to the IOC and were awarded the right to host the 2012 Games, is an inspiring reality, and is leaving a truly global legacy from the 2012 Games.”