Not Just Soccer for Youth/Coaches in Mozambique

One of the keys to an expansion phase of the program lies in the ability to increase coverage without compromising the quality of services offered. 2009 was characterized by increased deployment in the districts in Zambezia Province and the opening in Nampula Province.

In Zambezia, after advancing contacts with local authorities, starting in the month of July, new trainings began and equipped 125 new volunteers in the districts of Ile and Alto Molocue.

Meanwhile, at the end of the month of May the results of the baseline and situational analysios of the districts in Nampula Province, led to the installation of an office and leading to a permanent presence in the district of Malema. The choice was made based on the results of a comparative study of three districts (Malema, Ribaue and Murrupula) showed that in Malema a low youth participation in sports programs.

This process of expansion to the provinces made the FLM face challenges at various levels, which led to a reflection and the development of new implementation strategies in an attempt to balance the increased number of participants (occupations and children) and the requirement to strengthen presence in the territory with activities that ensure the quality and impact sought.

The office that was clearly more affected and subject to change last year was that of Gurue, the biggest challenges were to suggest about the ability to handle the growing number of participants from the local team of the need for the involvement of the occupations a higher level with the prospect of continuing activities, focusing on the feeling and appearance even about the need to monitor the activities of a point of view "quality".

From the 22nd to the 24th of November, the President of the Foundation, Maria de Lurdes Mutola, along with the Royal Ambassador of the Netherlands in Mozambique, Frans Bijvoet, visited the project locations of Malema, Gurue Makuaro and to see and feel the impact that this program makes in these communities. The two also used the opportunity of their visit to inaugurate the new office in Malema, financed by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Mozambique in front of more than 2,000 people.

A central objective was to make contact with traditional leaders in the areas of Malema and Gurue. Traditional leaders generally have a large impact on soceital norms, and their lobby could have a positive impact on the participation of girls in areas where they work as lords. The President held direct meetings with traditional leaders to address issues of sport, inclusion and issues related to sport in general.

Coverage The project continues to expand in order to reach the peripheries of the entire District.

Training Four trainings are planned for 100 coaches during the period September to December 2009, following the series of successful trainings in Mepuagiua, Lioma and Sede where 57 new coaches were trained using the “Craque!” manual.

League games The first phase of league games is almost complete. The league games started off with a total of 65 teams- a mixture of boys and girls, who took part in the “eliminator”games. The finals will take place in Gurué central in September 2009. The experience gained and lessons learned by both the project staff and coaches in organizing and implementing this first league phase will provide a strong foundation upon which to embark on the second phase of league games, planned for the school holiday period (between December 2009 and January 2010).

Partnerhsips The project has established some strategic partnerships with the local government (Gurué) Municipality, the Ministry of Education, the local community radio, the District Hospital and the local communities. The “President” of the Municipality provided a truck with driver, to ferry the project’s materials (balls and boundary markers, etc) from Nampevo (125km away) to the Foundation’s Gurué Office, free of charge. The Foundation was only required to provide fuel for the truck. The President of the Municipality is also the President of the Sports Commission. The project will explore ways to strengthen meaningful collaboration and resource mobilization and sharing with the local government and the Sports Commission. The Ministry of Education has collaborated with the Foundation by providing the Culture House venue for free during training sessions with coaches. Physical activity is vital to the holistic development of young people, fostering their physical, social and emotional health. Within schools, physical education is an essential component of quality education. The Foundation is therefore playing a positive and fundamental role in improving the quality of education for the marginalized youth, through the strategic partnership with the Ministry of Education. The local community radio always gives an account of the Foundation’s highlights during the weekly sports program. This publicity helps to raise the Foundation’s profile in the District. Through an arrangement with one of the doctors, HIV positive children are referred to the DDV program for physical, emotional and psychosocial benefits. These children are integrated into the program without stigma or discrimination. The local communities can always be counted on to clear football fields and to allow and encourage the children to participate in the sport for development program. The community leaders are invited to attend the league games and they bless the events with their presence.

Skills There is still a lot to be done with the existing polos in order to improve the technical, life and organization skills components. For example most of the young players still need to pass the ball and kick the habit of monopolizing the ball, with just one player kicking the ball hard from one end of the field to the other. The project staff and coaches will strive to find effective methods to discuss STI (including HIV) prevention and raise the self esteem among the participating children.

Volunteer motivation Another area that needs to be reinforced is the volunteer motivation. The “rewards”, or points system for the coaches has been developed as a way of motivating them to maintain frequent contact and implement sporting and life skills activities with the children. The project team is finding ways to fine tune this points system. Most of the coaches gave the feedback that lack of balls and other “materials” causes lack of interest among them and the children. The Gurué office recently received a consignment of soccer balls and field boundary markers. This will go a long way in maintaining interest among the children and the coaches. They do not show up for training. Creating “Craques”! The DDV project is instrumental in creating better citizens by developing positive attitudes, individual and collective technical skills and strategies/plans for the participating children within their respective teams and communities.

Consolidating the initiative and preparing to go beyond

During the first quarter of the year a lot of energy was spent in building the “quality” concept amongst our team of volunteer coaches. We have a lot of people playing on many soccer fields within the district, and improving the skills of both coaches and athletes was a significant part of our agenda.

To increase the quality you need to do more than feed technical knowledge. There is a lot more we need to do in order to advance further and meet our objectives. We are working on rehabilitation of fields in schools and inside the communities, planning with the Ministry of Education of the District, the Municipality and the coaches themselves, we choose fields and provide goalposts and material to create boundries, to each team we give jugs and cups, so they can bring water to the trainings and also, we are encouraging them to democratically elect the team names and symbols in order to have they ready for a league that will be happening during the next school holidays. The system of rewards is now fully implemented and will be perfected as we advance and receive feedback from coaches and staff.

This attempt to raise our quality status bar had a major opponent although, and it is called rain. Gurué is known as a district with a high humidity climate, with the peak of precipitations between December and ends of April. All this rain ends up disturbing the routine of trainings not only because the water itself but also because this is the time that most of the families travel far away to their machambas (crops) to cultivate and bring their children with them. The maintenance of some fields is also prejudiced because there is a local tradition to cut the grass only after the strong rain period ends. We are working to change this mentality because tall grass plus water is not just a barrier to the practice of sports but is also a channel to spread diseases like Malaria. With some teams/communities the strategy seems to be working and they are now doing a “team clean” action in their training fields.

Even with the rain and other constrictions like transport and the fact that some fields or communities are accessible only by motorcycle, which we don’t have, or by foot, our team was able to conduct 50 visits from March to April. From those visits, 32 were successful, with coaches working in their scheduled time with their children. We learned during this that some teams are a little small, with 10 athletes, and some are really huge, with more than 150 children playing. From the number of children noticed during the visits we calculated an average of 32 children per session and in terms of active coaches we have a number of 50, distributed all across the District and the two administrative Posts, with the remotest field at a distance of 190km. The calculated impact of the project nowadays is of at least 1600 children regularly playing soccer among the communities.

Thanks to the effort on sensitization among the community and the commitment we saw with some of our female coaches and athletes, we have now two women working in our staff as technical assistants. They bring with them not only new blood and energy but also the knowledge and the experience of the challenges that women face to practice soccer or any other sport in the rural areas of Mozambique.