In August Emily Reynolds (charity Trustee) returned to Zambia to visit our projects and see old friends. Emily first went to Zambia as part of UK Sport's IDEALS project in its innaugral year, 2007. The trip was to change her sights for the future and begin a lifelong involvement in work to further sport and education in the deprived communities across the country. After an initial 4 week trip, Emily returned to the UK determined to ensure that some of the opportunities and learning the UK students had be replicated for their Zambian counterparts. Just one of her many outcomes was the securing of Lyson Zulu a scholarship to Bath University.
Here is a brief summary of one week of her trip:
This is just a little update from my first 5 days in Zambia.
On Tuesday a number of productive meetings with the lovely and welcoming staff at the EduSport office, all grateful for the support of Friend of EduSport and its followers. There was much discussion and desire shown to be creative in developing the next step in our existing projects and exploring new areas. A long meeting with our intern Kelvin resulted in a packed timetable for the remainder of the week. It is apparent that the internship is challenging Kelvin to learn new skills, especially in planning and organisation of his work.
On Wednesday morining I sat in on the Go Sisters main Action team meeting, which set targets for the site co-ordinators over the next few months, provided final plans and rules of the annual Go Sisters tournament and acted as a distribution point for some football and netballs made at the Alive and Kicking office for each project site.In the afternoon a trip to Ngombe with Susan the site co-ordinator. This visit will be reported on in more detail as it was the start of a new sponshorship program for FoE, but for now it was very active and the peer leaders were incredibly keen and committed.
On Thursday, a morning in the office scanning for the Go Sisters team. Excellent demonstration of the accountability of the peer sponsorship programs; logging the parent and peer leader EduSport contracts, school reports and receipts. I certainly developed my own scanning skills during this busy morning! In the afternoon a trip to the Alive and Kicking factory, myself and Andrew (IDEALS team Leader) met with Chad,the CEO, to look around the stitching factory and got to see how all the footballs were made. It was an amaizing insight into a very sustainable project which we at FoE are supporting.
Lastly Friday, a trip to Chawama... firstly an extended meeting with all of the peer leaders, parents and the commitee as well as Jack Malambo, the headteacher of Chawama SEE. The end of the meeting resulted in some great progress for both the school and community sports commitee.
Written by Emily Reynolds, August 2010 (edited by Fiona Campbell, November 2010)
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