Mali

2005
2006
2007

The first Coaching for Hope school in Mali took place on 12-25 September 2005. In all some 100 orphans and 24 local youth workers benefited from this scheme.

The UK Coaches

Two UK Football Association coaches, Alan Gillett and Steve Rutter, travelled to Mali for the first week of the event. They trained local coaches to a recognised FA standard.

During the second week of the event two female coaches, Nici Rice, from Kent FA and Christie Maloney from Queen's Park Rangers travelled to Mali. They worked with a selected number of coaches from week one, as well as 45 girls from local organisations for underprivileged children.

The Local Coaches

The local coaches were drawn from a variety of organisations who expressed willingness to use the skills that they would gain to continue helping children's development using football. All the local coaches attended daily HIV/AIDS awareness sessions, that helped disseminate potentially life saving information.

The Children

The children involved in this event were from the following organisations:

• L'Assocation des Enfants et Jeunes Travailleurs (AEJT)
  A national organisation whose main focus is the prevention of child labour and the promotion of children's rights.
  
• Caritas
  A Christian network organisation, which works with street children.
  
• The Association Malienne pour la Promotion des Jeunes Filles (AMPJF)
  This organization works with teenage girls in difficult situations. It wants to use sport, and particularly football, to achieve HIV and reproduction health rising awareness and message diffusion.
  
• The Centre d'Accueil pour l'Education en Milieu Ouvert (CAEMO)
  An open centre for street children. It has a lot of sportive, educative and cultural activities focusing on integration and self esteem for these children facing very hard living conditions.
  
• Association des Centres d'Entrainement (ACE)
  The union of all football schools in Bamako.
  
• SOS village d'enfants
  Part of an international association based in Austria. These are orphanages organised like villages, with a mother and 10 children per house.
  

The Artists

Ross Georgeson and Nicola Maule led art lessons where the
children used art as a means of self-expression.

The Venue

The official football governing body in Mali is the Malian Football
Federation (FMF). It has a new president Salif Keita, an ex Malian
International footballer, who played professionally in France, Spain and the United States. The FMF supplied some of the trainers for the event. More information is available on their web site www.malifoot.com.

The Association feminine de football is a part of the FMF, and sent
some of the women players who wanted to become coaches.

The Town Hall with its different sports divisions supplied amateur
coaches who are working with children.

In September 2006, Coaching for Hope's patron DJ Fatboy Slim (aka Norman Cook) travelled to Mali. He visited the second Coaching for Hope school in Bamako and joined in the football and art workshops. He also got the chance to visit the local orphanage we work with and find out more about the realities facing children growing up in Mali.

In August 2007 five UK coaches and one senior coach from Coaching for Hope in Burkina Faso trained 45 Malian coaches at the Ouezzin Stadium in Bamako. 

This was the third Coaching for Hope school in Mali and we were delighted to see that a group of 15 coaches came back for more advanced training and are now actively engaged in training other coaches and rolling out the HIV and AIDS workshops with young people in the area.

Two experienced coaches from Tottenham Hotspur FC travelled to Mali, both of whom have particular experience in coaching disabled people.  Gareth Jones who works for the Spurs project, which is managed by Mencap, is himself visually impaired and found the experience of working with young blind people profoundly moving.  Before arriving in Mali he said “The work that I do as a football coach for people with disabilities is highly fulfilling and rewarding.  This forthcoming trip to Africa is very exciting as for me football is something which is universal and crosses many boundaries and divisions.  I can hopefully help others find new goals in life through the power of sport”.

Tony Dickson works with Everton’s learning disabilities team and also coaches deaf players.  In Mali, he led a session at the school for the deaf which was a fantastic experience for everyone who took part.  Tony went to his first Coaching for Hope school in Burkina Faso in January 2007 and said: “The children and adults in Africa have benefited from just the right blend of people skills matched with vision, drive, enthusiasm and sheer will to succeed.  The football coaching and HIV and AIDS workshops taught me personally a lot about human responsibility and gave me many positive ways to achieve specific learning outcomes” Photo © Skillshare/Jake Bharier