From June 27th to July 15th, AMANDLA EduFootball partnered with volunteers from Franklin & Marshall College to run the F&M ONE GOAL Holiday Program at the Chris Campbell Memorial Field in Site B, Khayelitsha.

The programme’s aim was to engage and educate children from ages 8 to 16 during their winter holidays. It involved daily workshops, life-skills activities, football training sessions, and tournament matches. The children were split into three different age groups, and each group attended the programme for one week. During the three week long programme ten local youth leaders from the AMANDLA Youth Leadership programme paired up with Franklin & Marshall Volunteers to conduct training sessions with the participants.

In the workshops, which were provided by the ‘Medical Knowledge Institute’ an international healthcare organisation, the children learned about personal and oral hygiene, sexual violence, and first aid. They further explored and discussed different topics, applied them to their own lives and eventually relayed that information to their peers.

At the beginning of each week, disposable cameras were handed out to the participants to go for a photographic scavenger hunt into Khayelitsha. The goal was to document things such as clean or dirty water, healthy food, toilets, and good or bad personal hygiene. These photos served as examples to open the group discussion during the workshops and were later on used to produce team banners or could be taken home as souvenirs.

Becca, a 19-year-old volunteer from Franklin & Marshall College, who volunteered for this programme, reports on her experience:

“The ONE GOAL Programme was amazing, because it changed my perspective on education. I have learned so much while volunteering here at the field, and I realised that learning is about experience. There is more to education than just classroom time, and I know that we all have realised this as volunteers, and hopefully the kids have during this programme as well.”