Having become a little political in some of the recent blogs, this one is most definitely a return to the core reason for being here in Zambia, namely helping Sport in Action with their corporate relations strategy. As a reminder, Sport in Action is the Zambian NGO that provides sport for development programmes for over 130,000 children per annum across Zambia. Sport for development is more than just sport; it is sport, and all the good that comes with it such as exercising for health and working in a team, but it is also then making use of the opportunity that sport presents to impart messages that will serve the participants faithfully throughout life. Here in Zambia (and across Africa), that means addressing the threats of malaria and HIV, for instance, or empowering girls and women to know their rights and opportunities. The link between the sport and the life skills is both blunt – using the fact that people come together for sport as an occasion to spread useful messages – and more subtle – using the teamwork required to win a netball game as an analogy for how to work together to achieve social change, for example.
Being unfamiliar with so many things when I first arrived here, it was difficult to understand how well run Sport in Action is and how to make a difference in merely two months. The organisation has been operating since 1998 having been the first sporting NGO to be set up in Zambia. The first few years were characterised by rapid growth and significant change and the organisation quickly made a name for itself, both here and further afield where the sport for development agenda was gaining momentum, not least as a means to help tackle the eight United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. In 2006, the now seven British universities of the Wallace Group began to support the activities of Sport in Action by sending students each Zambian winter (British summer) to assist with the coaching and mentoring of the children in SIA programmes in Lusaka; some of these students even got to work in more rural areas, as I was able to witness yesterday, helping SIA expand their operation to seven of Zambia’s ten provinces. The pace of change has slowed over the years as the business has consolidated its activities but the calibre of the staff, and the qualifications that those staff achieve, have always been a source of pride for the SIA management team.
Having now seen SIA in action, if you’ll pardon the pun, for the last two months, and also been able to juxtapose their operation with other business practices here, I am impressed with what I see. Frank, the Director, has a reassuring and pragmatic approach whilst also being well connected with various sporting, media and business organisations. Mwape, the head of programmes, navigates a well drilled ship as they deliver the huge number of programmes across such a vast area and with challenges which would terrify your average teacher in much of the developed world. And as for George, the head of administration, he is a savvy operator who knows how to get things done, tireless in his endeavour and always friendly in his demeanour. The remainder of the team of site coordinators, peer leaders and other management staff, too numerous to describe individually, but all proud and considerate in their approach, set a tremendous example to both the children they work with as well as the other organisations they come into contact with, such as Kicking Aids Out and Save the Children.
The organisation is not without its challenges of course. Most apparent is how to satisfy and fulfil the career paths of a cadre of staff who are both intrinsic to the culture of the organisation and, far from coincidentally, ambitious and eager to make a difference; this conundrum requires a specific focus in its own right I believe, and if any of you reading this know a good HR professional looking for an engaging and rewarding experience then I want to speak to you.
Equally challenging is how to continue to raise the funds to operate the programmes. Whilst many of the staff are either not paid at all, working out of love or as part of an apprenticeship, or are paid indirectly in the form of education and accommodation allowances, the business still requires funds to operate and the myriad non-commercial backers at the moment have far from bottomless coffers. Therefore, one of my targets was to demonstrate how to secure a sponsor and then how to look after that sponsor so they might invest again in future. SIA has been successful in the past at securing sponsors for events but this success has not always been consistent across years, sports, events and other variables. Broadly, I believe they have been approaching the market in the right way looking for small investments from a range of companies for specific activities – this is not a market or an organisation yet built for a large, long term traditional sponsor – but this requires constant focus and drive, and you have to be prepared for several rejections along the way.
I was therefore proud to secure Shoprite, a supermarket brand across Southern Africa with 19 stores here in Zambia, as the title sponsor of the 2nd Wallace Tournament of 2013 this weekend. This means that the 450 children and 50 adults that will attend the day long competition on Saturday will all receive a nutritious meal and drinks to support their endeavours in the increasingly warm clime. It also means that SIA has been able to save the budget they would have spent on this and can therefore reinvest it into the business. Looking after the sponsor has, of course, required time and attention to detail but I am sure we will have a happy sponsor, not least because they will be able to see the difference they are making to the children from across Lusaka who take part on Saturday.
There are various other sponsorship discussions ongoing with a variety of different companies, including one that I believe could make a significant difference to the operation of SIA by helping them to demonstrate transparency as well as impact. In a competitive market as well as one often mired by allegations of corruption, this could provide a huge competitive advantage by demonstrating that an investment in SIA will go directly to benefitting the children and the communities that need it most. This might not just be a Zambian proposition but one that companies further afield, with or without ambitions here, could find a compelling way to demonstrate corporate social responsibility. And a legacy of transparency and the good that this can do would really be something that I hope others here could take note of, as identified in my previous blogs. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist! In the meantime, I am just proud to have worked with and for an organisation that uses sport to make a real, tangible and lasting difference.
Posted in 2013
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