Wow, what a week. I’ve got about 3-4 blogs in mind but as I have only worked out how to upload one photo at a time (and do not yet know how to add a video – I’m thinking youtube but will have to explore that one later – you’ll just have to wait for the simply sensational church choir practice) I will keep this blog to my visit to a football factory yesterday called Alive and Kicking.
I will forgive the developed nations’ readers of this blog for thinking of a football factory as either a summer sports camp for children or, perhaps, for one or two of you who might have worked on the Olympic torch especially, an automated and mechanical process for producing footballs. This being a developing nation however, I actually mean a couple of rooms where about 50 people work to produce footballs by hand; 3 per day each is the target, 2 the minimum required.
On the same site as a beef factory, which of course supplies some of the raw material, and sitting alongside a shoe factory which also takes some of that same raw material, a team of skilled craftsmen and women cut, brand, stitch and, sometimes, pump up the balls. Silver ones, red ones, standard white ones and, even, hairy cowhide ones, these are then supplied both locally and internationally, including I am pleased to report to an erstwhile London 2012 sponsor in the form of John Lewis.
However, this is more than just a factory (and intelligent use of what otherwise might be waste product). Not only do the balls have to be made of tougher stuff than your usual football in order to survive both many years of use and on the hard grounds of Zambia (and abroad), they are also usually printed with messages used to support the sport for development mantra. By which I mean they use marks such as the ones below which, when the sport ends, are used to provoke thought and discussion amongst the children about all manner of social and health challenges. We use these balls in the Sport in Action programmes and it is also a fairly common CSR activity for various Zambian companies to purchase these balls for schools and communities I am told. Next week, I will get to see the lessons that stem from the use of these balls and hence I will report more then.
I am also designing my own ball(s) to bring back to the UK with various marks on in order to use in the classroom in years to come to educate the children I am teaching about life in Africa. Anyone reading this who might want me to order a ball or two for them, please let me know. Not only will you be helping the Zambian economy, you’ll be getting a football that will outlast you I am sure!
A final thought: I wonder if balls could be created with developmental / subliminal messages for elite footballers too: Reducing greed; Contractual fidelity; and Being a role model should all provoke thought for Messrs Rooney, Cisse and Suarez (to name but a few) I am sure…
Posted in 2013
Scholey.com 