We were up early Monday morning to visit the Alive and Kicking football production site. We were shown around by the manager Joel Kinuthia who explained how this not for profit business was started by a teacher from England who was inspired by seeing someone repairing a football at the side of a road. Alive and Kicking have produced around 300000 footballs since starting 6 years ago. The balls are hand stitched by local people using local materials and distribute the balls to local groups working in the community and across the African continent. We saw the whole process of making the balls from cutting the 32 panels to screen printing the logos to stitching the panels together and adding the bladder. The stitching looked really hard work!
We picked up our order of 100 balls which have the logos of both Sunderland Samba FC and Sunderland Methodist Circuit FC as well as health messages regarding HIV/AIDS. We immediately used 20 of the balls to do our first coaching session in Mitumba with 45 enthusiastic children. We also met parents of some of the children and took part in our first community workshop on the theme of business. It was great to see some of the same people we met 2 years ago and we were made to feel very welcome. Mitumba is a slum (or informal settlement) which we have been visiting and supporting since 2004. We will be there every day this week and it will be great to get to know more of the children over this time. The footballs are a real encouragement to them and can really make a difference to their lives giving the opportunity to play and also learn at the same time.
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