The Football Foundation of South Africa

Paarl Site Visit
Cha Inn Moon - February 5, 2014

 

The FFSA team conducted a site visit to the Mbekweni Community Sports Centre in Paarl yesterday to discuss about the new and upcoming Sports & Agribusiness for Youth Empowerment and Employability project.

 

The Alster Grootbos Hockey Project (as part of the FFSA) has partnered up with SCORE from Paarl and Society Empowerment Project (SEP) from Kenya to address the socio-economic challenges of rural communities by providing sports development programmes linked to food security, nutrition and social enterprise skills.

 

This partnership received start-up funding from GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) to launch community vegetable gardens, support the development of a hockey partnership between the three organizations and further develop the sharing of best practice and resources between Germany, South Africa and Kenya.

 

The project, which runs from January to December 2014, aims to empower young people (especially women and girls) through introducing the sport of hockey as well as providing training on food security and employability skills through creating sustainable food gardens.

 

With the support of generous equipment donations from Alster Hockey Club in Hamburg, a total of 20 new hockey sticks and 12 hockey balls were donated to SCORE at the Mbekweni Centre yesterday – staff and children spent an enjoyable afternoon being introduced to the sport and testing out the new equipment.

 

Volunteer coaches from the FFSA will soon pay another visit to the Mbekweni site to conduct follow-up hockey coaching clinics. As part of this partnership, Alster Hockey Club will also be donating hockey equipment to SEP in Kenya.

 

We are very much looking forward to further collaboration on this project and see all project participants join hands in creating sustainable gateways for social change in the months to come!