Last year I set up a football tournament across 7 Bupa offices encouraging over 250 people to play 5 a side football raising £4000 for the Great football giveaway. Football is close to my heart any way and seeing such benefits of something as simple as playing football, I knew I had to do something. As a result of the fantastic support this tournament had in 2008 I will be planning another tournament for 2009 to again support the great football giveaway.
The Great Football giveaway have also invited me to join them on their next trip to Rwanda in September which I have accepted so look forward to the privilege of giving out some of the footballs we earned through our tournament! Watch this space for regular blogs which will capture the journey from start to end here on our blog pages!
2 Comments Post Your Comment
Iain on 5.12.09 at 7:01 pm
Would be great to get some video from your trip to Rwanda and am looking forward to seeing more posts.
Stephen Dickson on 9.28.09 at 1:49 pm
Ok,
so i have returned from my trip to Rwanda and what a place and journey.
A fantastic experience, Rwanda is a beautiful place, its very safe, the people are very warm and kind, the country is very much like Wales, mountainous, green…but they have goats where we have sheep. They have little money, 900 Francs to the £1 and that is enough for a good meal if you bought the ingredients from the market and cooked it yourself.
Where a Genocide (1,000,000 people died) tore the country apart 15 years ago they now have an amazingly positive forward moving/thinking culture about “never again” and “never forget”. Hence why there is simply no violence, crime or any tension. We could learn alot from their culture.
The only time you would feel uncomfortable is when you hear the stories of the genocide, very sad indeed…but i’ll stop there, if any of you are interested in this then speak to me or just look it up (on youtube?)…its all there and utterly shocking…
The country is run by a dictatorship although not your old cambodia style, the army come out on the last saturday of every month and everyone has to clean the street and the area around their house, plastic bags are banned, the place is spotless. They could do well to use these techniques in Birmingham. The dictatorship is designed for the benefit of the country without being to the detriment of the people, everyone comes together and it makes a huge difference… it works!
Anyway onto football! Man, i love football.
The children love football, its electric. Some of the girls were far better than the boys, a very welcomed sight.
Everywhere we went we gave out balls, sometimes on road sides, we would run into peoples gardens and surprise the children, throw balls over their walls, kick them down over waterfalls to children playing at the foot, we stopped at schools and on a number of occasions found myself in front of +1000 children all keen to listen to me, take our challenges and win balls for their school.
I never thought i would do something like that but there i was, all these children putty in my hands. Its so rewarding when a school, its pupils and teachers give you such warmth and respect, and when the children realise their school now have 20 balls they all go crazy! We kicked the balls out to them on a few occasions and its like splitting the atom, forget the mad machine in france, give out a football in a school! Screaming and shouting with pure excitement..and bear in mind we may have travelled for an hour to reach this remote school so its rare they have visitors never mind who bring 20 brand new balls! Priceless.
Other times we would kick a ball into a playing field where children were kicking round a football made of banana leaves and string. Out of nowhere they have a new football. Shock turns into reality as they realise they have a new football and pump. Immediately they round each other up and set teams, make goals and set about a proper match. Sometimes we got involved but with 3000 footballs to give away you cant stick around long, someone else is unaware they are about to get their own ball.
The best though is the little children of 4-5 years of age. They have probably never had any ball, not even the banana balls. They’ve seen the older children kicking one and playing, for them its utter shock, we came from outer space, gave them a football and dissapeared so quickly, when you look back from the vehicle all you can see is this stumped child, totally confused. perfect. Then the penny drops and off he runs, beaming with his new ball, wanting to find his friends to play. Thats the beauty of a football, you have to share it.
To all of you that entered the football tournament, donated money or helped in any way I and all at the great football giveaway thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Whilst we took pleasure in seeing the children run off with their brand new shiney football and pump its all because of you that there are now +3000 footballs being played with – and if you imagine 10 boys and girls sharing each ball thats a whopping 30,000 children at least enjoying one of lifes simple pleasures.
I will be uploading all the photos as soon as possible and writing a nice big blog so you can all hear about our experiences. Im sorry i couldn’t do any blogs while there, the internet connections were forever failing.
More on this soon once i have the photos ready, thanks for reading and taking an interest. It means so much to me.
Steve