Spartans volunteers head out to Tanzania
A team of Spartans Community Football Academy volunteers head out to Africa on the journey of a lifetime next week. Three staff and a senior volunteer will join nine young people to spend two weeks working with a support project in Tanzania.
“Our patron Gordon Strachan hosted a very successful charity dinner last year (pictured above), which raised an incredible amount of money. That has enabled us to do a lot of things here at the Academy, including our extension, but it has also given us the opportunity to send a small group from Spartans to help in a project in Tanzania”, explained Kenny Cameron, who is Community Programme Manager at Spartans Community Football Academy.
“We have links with a very successful Edinburgh-based charity called YES (Youth Empowerment through Sport) Tanzania. Their aims and objectives are very similar to our own, and in the past we have sent footballs, strips and boots over there. But now, thanks to the support of some very generous supporters – and the brilliant fundraising efforts of the Spartan Army volunteers themselves – we can take a small group over there to help out.
“The guys will have a very full programme over the two weeks – delivering Young Leader training and a coaching education programme, visiting schools and an orphanage. They will also spend some time in a shanty town and will see first hand the grinding poverty of daily life in what is one of the poorest nations on earth. As you can imagine the facilities are not great in Arusha, where the pilot project is based, so in time we also hope to build a football pitch and fund their development worker post for a year – we can make a real difference.”
Although the Spartans team have a very busy schedule they won’t be working non-stop and they have a real treat to look forward to.
“We have built in an overnight safari as part of the trip. It’s our way of saying thanks to these young people – who all live locally – who have given up a lot of hours of their own time over two and three years to volunteer here with us. It will be an amazing experience, the adventure of a lifetime”, Kenny went on.
“Our motto this year is ‘Dream Big, Dream Fierce’ and the Tanzanian experience kind of sums that up – who would have thought that a wee group of young folk from North Edinburgh could travel halfway across the world and make a difference to peoples’ lives there? The message we are trying to convey to everyone who comes into contact with the Community Football Academy is: Believe – anything can be achieved.
“Tanzania will be an experience our volunteers will never forget, and the hope is that they will pass on what they learned there and share their experiences when they get back to North Edinburgh, inspiring the next generation of Spartan Army volunteers”.
If you’d like to support the Spartans Tanzania initiative visit
https://www.justgiving.com/SpartansTanzania-Appeal
