In brief

United Action for Children’s Community Sports for Development programme uses the power of football to mobilise children to channel their energy towards productive initiatives and to remove them from the streets and place in schools/training centres and make them become responsible citizens in their respective communities. The activities of this programme include football tournaments, clean-up campaigns by children and youths in communities, cooperative activities, thematic discussions on issues affecting their growth and development, container farming, HIV/AIDS issues and job shadowing.

Problem to be tackled

Through play children explore, invent and create. They also develop social skills, learn to express their emotions and gain confidence about their own capabilities. For many children in the rural communities of Buea Municipality in Cameroon, however, the choice to learn and grow through sport and play is unavailable robbing them of some of the most important childhood experiences.
In addition to missing out on experience of childhood through free play activities, by having minimal organised sporting activities, these children lack the developmental benefits of organised play including but not limited to social development, physical health and wellness, skill-based education, increased academic performance associated with sports, development of personal traits such as leadership, community building, conflict resolution, social inclusion, cultural and social sensitivity.
Children in these communities play with deflated footballs, using bricks as goal markers, bamboos as poles for goal posts. Outside of closed village school grounds, children lack playgrounds and open fields but make up for these deficiencies with strong wills and imaginations for play.

Local partner

United Action for Children implements a Community Sports for Development programme. It has a profound interest in protecting the rights of children because they are the most unrepresented and vulnerable members of society, the reason to create an organisation that insists on providing a caring society for children and young people, thus equipping them with the skills necessary to flourish into responsible, considerate and mature adults.

United Action for Children also runs a School on Wheels programme which aims at taking basic education to children in rural areas who do not have the opportunity of attending school either because there is no school in their neighbourhood or they do not have means to acquire their school needs.

Beneficiaries

This project focuses on deprived and rural based children and youth between the age of 8 and 18 years old living in the rural communities of Buea Municipality, 65% boys and 35% girls, 30% in school, 70% out of school.

SOL’s contribution

With the support of The SOL Foundation, United Action for Children will be able to expand their football programme by implementing various additional and strategic elements like weekly football drills, tournaments, equipment, coaching manuals, improvement and renovation of playgrounds, etc. in rural communities and semi-urban areas mainly to provide children and youths living in these communities a supportive and protective family environment.

Project partner

United Action for Children implements community development activities in Buea and Mamfe in Cameroon and develops through these activities new thinking and practice in participatory community action and community mobilisation. All activities have strong links to alleviate the suffering of individuals and families in the poorest communities through grassroots sustainable initiatives aimed at particularly local empowerment, poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability at a community-level. All their activities are action-based and have strong focus on achieving leading local participation, sustained learning benefits and replication of local success stories.