Burkina Faso
The first Coaching for Hope session in Burkina Faso was held on 16-23 July 2005. It was held in the capital city of Ouagadougou at the training ground of the Burkinabé national football team (COMET).
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The UK Coaches
Seven UK coaches from Brighton and Hove Albion, Hull City and Queen's Park Rangers travelled to Burkina Faso in July 2005 for the first of the Coaching for Hope events. They worked with 24 local coaches and 100 children from an orphanage in Ouagadougou.
The Local Coaches
The local coaches were drawn from a variety of organisations and some private individuals who expressed willingness to work on the programme and use the skills that they would gain to continue helping children's development using football.
The Children
All 96 children (aged between 11 and 16) involved in this event came from an orphanage called Association Managre Nooma for the Protection of Orphans (AMPO) in Ouagadougou. Founded in 1995, the organisation feeds and educates the children and provides vocational training workshops and medical care. It also helps children with schooling bursaries; these children are not necessarily residents but have had a connection with the orphanage in the past.
AMPO has a mobile education division that tours villages around Ouagadougou. More information is available on their web site in French and English at http://sahel.de/
The Venue
The official football governing body in Burkina Faso is the Burkina Faso football federation (FBF). It was founded in 1960 shortly after the country gained independence. It became a member of FIFA and CAF (African Football Federation) in 1964. The federation has a web site at www.fasofoot.com
The FBF supplied some of the trainers for the event.
The Direction de la Promotion du Sport et de la Jeunesse (DPSJ) is a department within the town hall of Ouagadougou. It is responsible for the promotion of sport and young people in the city. It supplied some of the trainers for the event
L'Assocation des Enfants et Jeunes Travailleurs du Burkina Faso (AEJTB) is a national organisation and has centres in 15 other towns and cities in Burkina Faso. It operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Employment and the Young. It is part of a wider organisation MAEJT (Movement African des Enfants et Jeune Travailleurs), which is represented in 18 African Countries. Its main focus is the prevention of child labour and the promotion of children's rights. The members are children and young workers from the informal sector. AEJTB supplied some of the trainers for the event.
In January 2006, 7 coaches from Hull City, Brighton & Hove Albion and QPR returned to Burkina Faso to follow up on the work they began there last summer. The UK and local coaches were able to expand their work into local schools, reaching out to hundreds of children. In all some 24 local coaches and 600 disadvantaged children, including orphans, deaf children and blind children, benefited from the scheme in 2006.
In July 2007, we held our fifth week-long training school in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Forty six local coaches and youth workers were trained to deliver football and HIV and AIDS education to young people in their communities. The training was provided by a select group of nine Burkinabé coaches who had already been trained by CFH, as well as UK coaches from Brighton & Hove Albion FC, QPR and the Liverpool County FA.
Roma Traoré (Coaching for Hope assistant) explains, "The recent CFH school in Burkina was really great. Motivation from all the coaches was very high, and the senior coaches did a great job of training the others and worked well with the CFH management team. The kids really enjoyed themselves and learnt a lot too. It was good to see some of the new innovations such as using the art classes we ran to do HIV education through art. Also, the drummers were a good addition to the final tournament, and gave it a real African atmosphere.”
Coaching for Hope's Tom Pitchon travelled to Burkina Faso in July and was impressed by the enthusiasm and dedication of everyone involved: "The scorching heat and early starts did nothing to dampen the sense of excitement and enthusiasm in the air during the week. Local participants practised delivering social messages through football and received supervision and feedback from Burkinabé and UK coaches alike. The spirit was one of friendship and it didn’t take long for the new coaches to open up and warm to one another in typical Burkinabé style. Picture a full size grass pitch with up to four coaching sessions happening at the same time and you may get some idea of what one of these events looks like. There are often numerous different types of activities taking place at once. One group may be indoors taking part in a session focusing exclusively on HIV and AIDS awareness, whilst another may be working solely on football coaching out in the field and yet another may be taking part in an ‘integrated’ practical session. These integrated sessions link the football and HIV education together explicitly with specially designed training exercises. I was really interested to see these in action because these sessions were a new innovation for CFH. Issues such as contraception, abstinence, fidelity, risk and HIV transmission were addressed through the coaching sessions themselves. In one session local coaches practised dribbling a football through cones in different zones – if they made a mistake in the ‘high risk zone’ they were suspended from the game. Later they were asked to sit down and discuss how the game could be related to issues surrounding sexually transmitted infections and I sat and watched as football coaches discussed their various definitions of high risk behaviour, sitting in the middle of the pitch surrounded by footballs and cones. It was great to feel the enthusiasm of the coaches and see how the physical movement and sporting context energised the debates."
