PLAY SOCCER Malawi

PLAY SOCCER Malawi operates on three site in Townships near Blantyre city: Bangwe, Chingumula, and Malabada-Ndirande. 

SO MANY CHILDREN

As well giving the children a chance to play, PLAY SOCCER Malawi has three educational components:

  1.  health education and life skills for physical development including disease prevention, immunizations, nutrition, hygiene, clean water and sanitation,
  2. social values and skills, such as leadership, teamwork, fair play, peaceful solutions, respect for others and gender equality,
  3. the rules, skills and techniques of the game of football.

Basic literacy skills are emphasized in the activities of each of these three components.

HAPPY DANCING GIRLS

However, it is important that the children are given the  chance to play and have some fun, which the UN have Declared one of the fundamental Rights of a Child.

“The child shall have full opportunity for play and recreation, which should be directed to the same purposes as education; society and the public authorities shall endeavour to promote the enjoyment of this right.” United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (Article 31). 

 

CIRCLE OF FUN!

HEALTH PROMOTION ASPECTS 

The health aims are:

  • To increase an understanding of basic health issues, e.g. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and the need for child-immunization.  
  • To promote the value of HIV voluntary testing
  • To challenge misconceptions about HIV/AIDS and the stigmatization of people who have HIV/AIDS

    • After the session, the children are given a bottle of water and a bun.  However, it is solely about football: football is the 'vehicle' that attracts these children, who the local health service find hard to reach. Like the children everywhere, they love to play, but additional aims of this holistic project include social and health education.

    END MALARIA CAMPAIGN POSTER

    Example of a PLAY SOCCER Health Education Activity

    Activity: Vaccines Tig (or Tag).

    Objective: To introduce the Immunization concept through a game.

    Presentation/set up:
    Make a 20/25 metres square a have all the children scattered inside. Ask them to stay in pairs.

    Instructions:
    The instructor is “it”. In this game the tig represents diseases that can be prevented with vaccines (polio, measles, diphtheria, tetanus, tuberculosis, rubella and mumps).
    The children will play in pairs. One will play as the vaccine (shielding his/her friend) and the other one will run away avoiding being touched by you. Each team a children is touched by you has to sit (with his/her “vaccine”) in the ground. The last two children to remain standing will be the winners of the first round. Empower the children to name the diseases. You can play some rounds with no shields for the children to experience how it feels when we don’t have the “vaccine”.

    FUN

    However, the unbridled joy of the children, both boys and girls, at having the opportunity to be children and to play with a proper football was truly uplifting to see. (They usually play football with a homemade ball of polythene bags, bound together with string.)

    The Friends of PLAY SOCCER Malawi collected 90 kits, mostly from Hutchison Vale (Edinburgh Youth team) and Glasgow Celtic, and had them shipped in Malawi before our visit in 2007.

    At the same time, Edinburgh Council Sports and Leisure were collecting strip and other football-related items.

    To date (November 2009), the Friends of PLAY SOCCER Malawi have collected more than 1,500 football shirts, a similar number of shorts and pairs of socks and other football-related items.

    A ROADSIDE RUBBISH HEAP

    This is a roadside rubbish heap just outside the school, with a graveyard in the background: these graveyards are common in Malawi and reflect the effect of the AIDS pandemic. There are so many people living here that it is hard to keep the neighbourhood tidy. Half an hour previously, there was a real 'free range' chicken with her chicks looking for food in the rubbish: more disturbing than that, there was a four year old girl and her 18 month old sister doing the same. Some images were just too shocking to photograph.

    CHILD PROTECTION

    BANNER - SAYING 'END CHILD ABUSE' (IN CHICHEWA)

    PLAY SOCCER Malawi takes child protection issues very seriously. For instance, they have worked with the Malawi Police Service on community policing initiatives. As a result children are now able to report child abuse in the community, whereas in the past this was simply not possible to expose these crimes.

    Also, PLAY SOCCER Malawi is aware of the potential of child abuse by staff and their volunteer and actively strives to prevent this happening.

    All Volunteers has to sign a form that includes this statement:
    “I understand that: 
    - the information on this form may be verified, including police records
    -  Volunteers may be terminated if they violate the Fair Play Code of Conduct
    - PLAY SOCCER expects each Volunteer to maintain the highest personal standard of conduct as a role model for children in the programme”

    PLAY SOCCER Malawi is run by Patrick Kulemeka, assisted by Abel Mkandawire.

    The Friends of PLAY SOCCER Malawi is a Registered Charity, charity number is SCO39953.

     

                  

     

    THE AREA AROUND THE PROJECT