Community Sports Coaching
When our project Manager, Tom Bowden, came to Malawi in 2001 he was invited to take time out from coaching Falls Secondary School to coach the Malawian national team. Aside from it being a fantastic experience it also highlighted a real need for football development in Malawi.
Tom found that Malawian children were not being given the opportunity to reach their sporting potential. Tom felt that their enthusiasm and raw talent deserved more so he set up a community coaching programme at Premiership club Silver Strikers in Lilongwe. He taught the coaching staff how to coach children between the ages of 5 and 11. Now every monday the stadium is open to children to receive the opportunity to play and learn from the coaches.It has been incredibly successful and regularly attracts over 100 children.
In 2007 Tom ran a coaching clinic for 15 malawian coaches. This course trained these coaches how to deliver sports coaching to the 5-12 age group. The course also provided training in delivering the HIV/AIDS awareness message. With a body of coaches we are replicating the success achieved at Silver Strikers across the entire city.
In 2008 Building Futures in Malawi purchased land for a Community Sports School. The school will provide a top quality education but will also offer sporting facilites for the wider community. Our full time football coach and project manager James Chilimampunga coaches 200 children every day at this facility and the project is growing rapidly. We are keen to train more coaches and increase the size of the facility so please help us by donating.
Each summer a team of volunteers run holiday football courses in Malawi. They have also been involved in coaching at a refugee camp and a prison. If you would be interested in coaching football in Malawi then please contact us. Please note that we expect all of our volunteers to have experience coaching sports or teaching children. We want to ensure that everything that we do provides quality for the parcipitants.
Summer '06 team meet England goalkeeper David James!
In what was a rather surreal couple of days the Summer 2006 team spent the weekend showing England Goalkeeper David James and his family projects in Malawi. This included playing a game with the goalkeeper against local street children.
The England star captained a team of over-competitive Englishmen (that included BFiM representatives Tom Bowden, Tom Ellis and Simon Lane) to a thumping 3-0 victory over a team of over-charitable Malawian street children.
Highlights of the game went to Tom B for his lungbursting 60 yard, box-to-box run that culminated with a ruthless finish to open the teams account; Simon for a last minute ‘do or die' challenge on a very quick boy with very skinny legs that seemed intent on ruining the grown ups fun;
Tom E for an equally courageous diving save that kept out their best effort (shame you were playing on pitch and that the ref gave a penalty); our goalkeeper (that we had ‘borrowed' from the best team we had seen in the morning) who saved the resulting penalty;
Robert Hillier for confirming that wartime trench camaraderie is alive and well in the modern world; Nick ‘I’ve never seen a football before' for reminding us that ‘football is harder than it looks' and best of all David James for proving categorically that ‘football IS harder than it looks' by confidently pulling on the number 9 jersey and subsequently launching every open goal opportunity over the bar and into the neighbouring village. Priceless.
If you are interested in becoming a Building Futures in Malawi sports coach please contact us.
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TV Gives Charity Donations A Boost
Friday 26th February 2010
The science of marketing psychology isn't just reserved for the consumer masses, it can be used to help maximise donations to charities and not for profit organisations. A recent study carried out by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) found that different types of media coverage can have a profound effect on the amount of money donated by the public.
Following the Haiti disaster, the foundation found that newspaper coverage of the event was not as effective in encouraging members of the public to donate to the appeal. Advertisements and stories influenced only 6 per cent of those who gave money. This is in stark contrast to 11 per cent of the public who donated to the DEC Asia-Pacific appeal just a year earlier.
The shift in trend could be seen as alarming by fundraisers, but in fact it is our use of technology that is affecting the way we empathise with a cause, and our likeliness to donate to an appeal. Television coverage accounted for as much as 75 per cent of donations received for the Haiti Disaster Appeal, a figure that has risen since the Asia-Pacific appeal in 2009, where the figure was less than 70 per cent.
It is evident that fundraisers need to maximise the potential of modern technology, and use social media portals to tap into altruistic tendencies. Television may be top of the donation leader board now, but surely it is just a matter of time before social networking sites such as FaceBook and Twitter play just as an important role in raising much needed funds for appeals.
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