24 Hour Crime Prevention Throughout Football

CAPE TOWN – “A child in sports is a child out of court” opened the Provincial Minister of Community Safety, Mr. Albert Fritz, at the 24 Hour Crime Prevention Football Event that was hosted by AMANDLA EduFootball on Saturday, 30 April in Khayelitsha.

The event saw more than 1500 active participants and 1500 spectators pass through the gates in order to participate in or watch one of the 292 football games that were played throughout the
course of the event.

The 24 hours of football, fun & education aimed to create awareness surrounding the importance of crime prevention initiatives in South Africa. The Provincial Minister emphasised in his speech that more such projects are needed in South Africa: “We need this in all our townships – an opportunity for youngsters to take part in sports, so that we can change youngsters into good footballers, good sports persons instead of criminals. I applaud AMANDLA EduFootball for their initiative.”

The morning of the event was dedicated to the youngest participants, the Under 13 boys, followed by the Junior and Senior girls who played through the afternoon and then the Under 16 Boys competing in the early evening.

The youth tournaments were followed by the Men’s Open Tournament, starting at around 22h00 and concluding with a spectacular final at 09h30 the next morning.

The event was further supported by the Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Dan Plato, who found motivating words for the participants and encouraged them to push through the long day of football. A highlight of the day was the visit of Bafana Bafana player Thembinkosi “Terror“ Fanteni and AJAX Cape Town player Sonwabile Lolo, a local success story from Khayelitsha. As the football stars assisted with the award ceremony for the Under 13 Boys, the smiling eyes spoke for themselves. It was obvious that receiving their medals from one of their big idols was by far the biggest prize the young boys could have imagined.

Altogether the 24 Hour Crime Prevention Football Event was a great success due to the participants’ unwavering commitment to make a change for the better in their community as well as the dedication of all other partners involved in this event.

A big thank you goes out to all the sponsors -to Shoprite who fed 500 hungry participants with their mobile soup kitchen, to Peninsula Beverages who entertained thousands of kids and spectators throughout the day with their Coca Cola truck as well as sponsoring drinks for the event, to Umbro for putting a lot of smiles on the faces of participants by sponsoring the prizes for all age categories as well as Macs products for contributing 120 medals to honour the participants, to Mike’s Sports for sponsoring the trophies and to PicknPay for their generous food voucher that allowed AMANDLA to provide hot soup and coffee to the Men’s Tournament participants throughout a long night of football.

About AMANDLA EduFootball:

AMANDLA EduFootball is a South African Non-Profit Organisation that provides educational football programmes to children and youth with destabilised, traumatic and/or non-existing family and community structures in Cape Town. Using football as a tool to educate children and provide a variety of Life-Skills, AMANDLA strives to create young leaders and role models who influence their peers in a positive way. Starting with 160 youth from 10 residential care facilities in 2007 growing to 550 youth in 2008, today AMANDLA reaches out to over 2000 youth from more than 30 residential care facilities and their surrounding communities on a weekly basis. For more information log on: www.edufootball.org