Coaching for Hope is part of the international volunteering and development organisation Skillshare International, and is supported by The FA. We support local efforts to use football to empower young people in developing countries and engage them with key issues affecting their lives. The Coaching for Hope programme started in West Africa in 2005. We now work in both West Africa and South Africa where we have trained over 700 coaches and run HIV awareness and football sessions for more than 30,000 young people.

Find out more at www.coachingforhope.org

David Beckham and Lucas Radebe


David Beckham with young players in Khayelitsha.

Run Fatboy Run!

On 18th April, CFH Patron Norman Cook will be running the Brighton marathon with a friend to raise funds for our work in Southern Africa.  This is the first marathon Brighton has hosted and he is hoping to raise £7,000 to support our work.  Please sponsor him at www.justgiving.com/normancook

Fundraising supper

On 31st January Andy Player from Brighton and a few of his friends gathered at his house to watch the Final of the Africa Nations Cup.  Egypt v Ghana.  In keeping with the occasion they ate Egyptian and Ghanaian food (or as close as they could get!) and each donated £5 to Coaching for Hope.  This raised £55 and we are hoping to encourage more of these “football suppers” during the World Cup as an easy way to raise money for us.

South Africa Course 09

December 2009 was a busy month for us in South Africa, firstly there was the well publicised David Beckham visit, and then we ran our first locally led CFH football-social inclusion course in Cape Town. Ivan Kerspuy, Barnett Stevens and Dennis Kerspuy (our SA Programme Assistant), ran the course for 25 local community coaches who were aiming to attain their CFH level one certificate. The course was a great success!

Ivan, Barnett and Dennis are now CFH qualified Level three senior coaches, which allows us to run courses in-country with no UK senior coach supervision. Our in-country staff will now support these 25 local community coaches further in terms of continual professional development, and they will also be available for opportunities to provide coaching in other countries such as Lesotho and Botswana, with only the need for remote UK supervision and support. This is a significant development as we move further towards our aim of making the in-country programme as self sustainable and cost effective as possible. We would like to congratulate Ivan, Barnett and Dennis, and all the level one coaches on their achievements and wish them all the best for the future.

On 1st September 2009, flash floods claimed 187 lives and affected 635,273 people in West Africa. On that day in Burkina Faso, an estimated 100,000 people, including two of our own employees, lost their homes and possessions when 264 millimetres of rain fell in 12 hours - the biggest deluge since records began 90 years ago.  

Approximately 63,000 people in Ouagadougou were living in temporary camps around the capital after the floods, with the rest staying with family and friends. Many young people could not afford to go to school and so there was little for them to do. HIV awareness campaigns are often run through schools, which meant that children unable to attend school were left in a very vulnerable position. We spotted an opportunity to engage with the young flood victims who were outside the school system, using games and sport to talk about sexual health.  We responded to the needs of these young people by developing a bespoke curriculum which mixes games and, for children over 12 years old, sexual heath education, through sport.

The largest refugee camp, The Hippodrome
.

 After a pilot of this new curriculum we successfully applied to Plan International for funding for a wider programme involving 10 coaches working simultaneously on four sites during November 2009.  Three times a week our team of 10 experienced CFH coaches worked with 25 different children, facilitating discussions and giving information about HIV and AIDS whilst also using sport and play to empower the participants to make positive decisions about their sexual health.

During these workshops several young people visited a local HIV voluntary testing centre to get tested - direct evidence of the success of the activities in empowering young people to take charge over important decisions in their lives.   18-year old Rouamba Florence spoke about her reasons for getting tested, “I did it for several reasons.  After the workshops, I understood what HIV/AIDS is and the benefits of screening test. The screening test will allow me to know my status and have a good behaviour if I have sex with my partner. My friends who have received the sensitisation of CFH with me went to do their screening tests - it is that which motivated me to do the same. Thank you to CFH and the coaches who have enabled us to better know and understand the meaning of HIV/AIDS.”

Boost project, UK

We are continuing to work with the Boost project to deliver our UK awareness programme, with trained educators and mentors delivering our substance abuse curricula, alongside our new development awareness module. This new module encourages the young members of the Boost project to develop case studies about themselves, and challenges them about UK and world geography by looking at city populations and problems faced by people in the different communities we work with. We are also in the early stages of planning a Boost project trip to South Africa in September 2010.

England's 2018 Bid

The England 2018 Bid team have decided to give £1 to Coaching for Hope for every item of 2018 merchandise purchased. This is another example of how special our relationship with the FA is to us. If you would like to see what they are selling and support the 2018 bid please check out the website.

If England win the bid, Coaching for Hope plans to play a major role in delivering the social and international side of the legacy and this is something FIFA are very much encouraging.

If you would like to register your support for the 2018 bid please go to http://www.england2018bid.com and support us at the same time!

Gender and Sport in Africa’s Development

In November 2009, Skillshare International development worker Lucy Mills was invited to present a research paper at the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) 2009 Gender Symposium in Cairo, Egypt.

Established by prominent African scholars in the 1970s, COSESRIA is committed to continent-wide knowledge production and the Gender Symposium is an annual

event that provides a platform for gender-focused debates.  The theme for the 2009 symposium was Gender and Sports in Africa’s Development and participants discussed a variety of topics such as gender-based violence in sport; gendered power relations within sport; representations of female athletes in the media and social constructions of femininity and masculinity; and how to develop sport to the advantage of women.

Lucy was among 20 professors and practitioners from other countries to present her research on women’s football in South Africa.  Her paper derives from her experiences as a football player for the University of Cape Town women’s team, as well as from previous research endeavours.  Being an avid supporter of local and international women’s football, she gets frustrated with there being little opportunity for her to be a ‘real’ fan of her sport.  Her paper argues that although across the African continent sport is being promoted among women as a tool for development, professional women’s sport does not tend to be invested in or taken seriously.  There is currently a lack of representatives in positions of power in both the corporate world and the media to ensure that women’s sport gains support and exposure.  These institutions have the potential to create a profitable market and fan-base by publicising female teams and athletes.  Striving to realise African women’s sport as a globalised phenomenon would accelerate the process of ‘normalising’ women as athletes, which would greatly contribute to neutralising gender inequalities and encourage wider female participation, spectatorship and consumerism.     

During the symposium, Lucy met other specialists in the sport for development field who showed interest in collaborating on various transnational and other research projects.  Lucy comments “As a Skillshare volunteer for the sport for development organisation SCORE in Cape Town, it is an exciting prospect to combine experiences in the field with applied research, and SCORE are wholly supportive of these ambitions.”

Ke Ntate Shawn, as he is now known, stated “I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to play football growing up. I believe that football has not only played a large part in my personal development, but it has also become an invaluable travelling and intercultural tool. Throughout my time in Asia, and already during my time here in Lesotho, I have been able to make connections with people and communities through a shared passion for football. I am looking forward to strengthening these connections though my work with Coaching for Hope and I am very excited to be a part of an organisation that uses football as a vehicle to provide children with a variety of educational and social opportunities.”

COOL BRITANNIA is every supporter’s “home from home” in South Africa - a music festival with English, South African and International headliners.

25p from every ticket sold will be donated to us, so click here to book your tickets!

Development worker placement available: We will soon be advertising for a Sport for Change strategic development advisor in Burkina Faso.

For a full role description, please visit the Skillshare International website

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Football for Hope

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