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Spotlight - Summer 2004
edited by Maggie and Pippa Currey
FOOTBALLS FOR ZAMBIA - UPDATE
Fund an unqualified success
by Roger Thompson
For the past five years we have been sending footballs and netballs
to Zambian schools and the project goes from strength to strength.
We started from fairly modest beginnings and in 2001, thinking to
beef up our funding, I wrote to all Britain’s 20 Premiership
clubs, asking for help in cash or kind in an effort to enable children
in Zambia to participate in the most popular sport in the world.
I had hoped for help from one or two. Some didn’t bother to
reply, others, like Leeds, sent a small, not-very-good photograph
to be auctioned for funds; it didn’t seem worth doing. Others
said sorry they couldn’t help. So that was that, and we reverted
to depending on our trust members’ generosity. And last year
we sent money for 200 netballs and 200 footballs – enough
for half the schools in Zambia. This year we hope to help the other
half too, if the response is good enough. The gratitude of the children
is expressed in the many letters and photographs I get each year
from the school. A fiver buys one football, £20 supplies a
school. Please help these children. Send your cheque marked Football
Fund to Jo Herkes, Honorary Secretary. And if you would like a few
of Roger’s excellent fund-raising flyers to distribute at
your church or neighbourhood school, featuring a photo of Chibesekunda
School’s football and netball teams, it’s
47 Bridgen Road, Bexley, Kent DA5 1JE ;
Telephone 01322 522 071;
Email: Thombridge@ukgateway.net
You’ll Never Walk Alone………..
In March this year Zambia Society Trust member John Whittingham,
who had written to several Premiership football teams asking for
tokens to take to football-mad Zambia, but had had scant response,
received an encouraging letter from Liverpool Football Club. This
was followed by a phonecall from John to Vincent O'Brien of Liverpool's
PR department, who told him that the club had a full replica strip
– 12 shirts, shorts and pairs of stockings - which they were
prepared to donate, if John could name a deserving team. He goes
on:
I had visited the Chitsime Project in 2002 and had followed with
interest the developments that were taking place at the orphanage,
the clinic, the special needs classes and the Community School,
St Lawrence's. And this school seemed the ideal recipient. So David
Powell followed up the phonecall with a letter to Liverpool on behalf
of the Zambia Society Trust. The football strips were ours and the
family party – including three of our daughters, and two of
their boyfriends – took them out to Zambia.
On 16 April a large crowd gathered at St Lawrence's Primary School,
including Zambia Society Trust members David & Kay Powell, and
John and Gretta Hudson of Lusaka. The boys of the St. Lawrence team
posed proudly in their shirts, on which the Liverpool Football Club
motto was emblazoned as if it were a personal message from the club
to this remote Zambian football team in Msisi Compound. The
presentation and the football match which followed were a great
morale booster for the Chitsime project and the wonderful people
who lead it - and who value profoundly all that the Zambia Society
Trust is doing to help them.
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