Soccer + Life Skills for Hundreds of Youth

Over the last two months, our team in Cameroon have been busy organizing elections in 11 neighborhoods in Kumba and Mamfe. This time, the term is 2 years long. We want young people to benefit from a longer experience in a leadership position. Each community elected 4 peers to serve in a leadership role on the youth council. They will help organize play in their community, referee and manage games, and plan community service projects. 

Clorane, who is the President of Metta Quarter neighborhood, said after the training:

"I am impressed. I attended the training today and I am now 'loaded' with information about the responsibility. Thank you to my peers for trusting me to be a youth leader. Thank you to Open Field for organizing such a grand exercise."

We couldn't agree more. Thanks to the leadership of our staff in Kumba, we are able to host phase 1 of the trianing in our office. Phase 2 will take place in the field and focus on refereeing and field management. From there, with their support, we will launch league play in November!

Thanks for your support to make this happen.

Links:

• FIFA Foundation article about our work

We're proud to share updates from Cameroon demonstrating the power of your investment in sport to yield positive social impact.

One: Our latest step toward sustainability just got the boost it needed to get off the ground. Thanks to 12 investors from our supporter network, we raised $5,000 in start up capital and now we're launching a social enterprise in Cameroon! Our new Event Equipment Rental business, led by Ashu and Killian, will begin generating revenue by lending canopy tents, tables, chairs, and other party essentials out to individuals and community groups for any special occasion. We'll save money we used to spend on these items for our tournament launching & championships, too. We hope this is the first of many initiatives of this kind.

Two: We're bringing back our U-17 tournament after many years... The theme for this years event is Promoting Peace & COVID-Prevention. The competition kicked off on Sunday and runs thorugh August 1st. We decided to bring back this initiative because many youth are beginning to 'age-out' of our main programming and leagues and we wanted to ensure they had some positive activities to keep them engaged during the summer holiday.

Three: We're hosting our first-ever Olympics-style competition in all our neighborhoods. Youth will register their times running the 400m, 800m and counting their juggling, push ups / sit ups, and scoring on goal from a distance this month and again in August to see how they improve their own personal goals over the course of the long summer holiday. The theme here is personal growth and goal-setting. We are encouraging them not to compare themselves to anyone else, but try and improve themselves as they want to.

Four: 7 youth leaders have been selected to participate in a computer literacy course. The highly competitive selection process was applied to ensure that we invest in those who really want to gain these skills and make the most of this opportunity. Participants selected for this month-long program will gain new skills and knowledge about information technology. We hope this is a launch pad for future skill development to get them on the path to employment or continued education.

What started with educational soccer leagues has blossomed into may more ways of engaging youth on and off the field... all thanks to your commitment to our work!