248 boys and girls kicked off the Open Fun Football School programme in Afghanistan and opened in Kabul with a colorful and well organized football festival.
In close partnership with the Afghanistan Football Federation – the AFF, we plan to implement 5 OFFS this year alone for 1000 boys and girls and educate 100 local coaches. With this experience and in cooperation withour local partner AFF, we hope to be able to create a nationwide platform to implement OFFS as a tool to develop childrens football for all boys and girls all over Afghanistan the upcoming 5 years.
– Our preparations for this project has been longer than usual, the CCPA director Anders Levinsen says. We have tried to raise the funds for this Afghan programme for nearly 3 years now but have struck out so far. Last summer, we organized a pilot programme by own means to test if the programme could work in the Afghan context, and we found that it could with great success – with both boys and girls playing in the same field. The Afghanistan Football Federation was so thrilled, that we on their initiative signed a partnership agreement in February with the intention to use our Open Fun Football School programme as a tool to develop children’s grassroot football and football clubs for both boys and girls across all Afghanistan using the OFFS model as mechanism. But in spite of our success and partnership agreement, we have still not succeeded in raising the necessary funds for the programme.
– Hence again this year, we are funding the football schools in Afghanistan by own means. We have however made a really good match with hummel, the equipment sponsor of the Afghanistan Football Federation, who provides all the equipment for the football schools as a part of their sponsorship. hummel feels a stronger obligation towards Afghanistan than just supporting the national team – they want to help develop children’s football across the nation. We also enjoy the support of Prince Ali of Jordan, vice-president of FIFA, and his private foundation and joined, these means are adequate to finance this years activities, apart from Cross Cultures’ expenses – but I’m not to complain since our programme builds on voluntarism. So I’m overjoyed and humbled once again to use our football schools as tool to create a project which makes sense to so many people and to meet new friends and colleagues and to get to know the Afghan people and culture.
– And when seeing the OFFS-Festival, there is no doubt that we have to continue here. While the seminar was good the festival was fantastic, I must say. The way the coaches lived the OFFS with the children, the children’s commitment and dedication, but also the flexibility and how we manage to host 248 kids on one pitch without any problems at all, was telling it all. and yes, again I am impressed to see how our specific fun concept and ‘the integrated football approach’ also works here. Thank you to all the coaches, AFF, Khalida and not the least Ali Lali and all our friends in the OFFS-family that made it happen. I look forward to more of the same 🙂 Anders Levinsen ends
