Shongi Soccer
Philipp Lahm Foundation builds football ground
The Philipp Lahm Foundation is financing the construction of a sports ground to support the development of a township community.
In the project “Shongi Soccer” the Philipp Lahm Foundation is helping to build a sports ground between two townships near the South African city Johannesburg, in order to give the young people of the area the chances that sport and education can bring. The poverty and misery of the townships offer no perspectives for those who grow up there. Families are destroyed by destitution and disease, children are often left to fend for themselves, and young people have nowhere to go.
Cooperation promotes positive values
The sports ground gives them new opportunities, and several South African NGOs – including the local NGO Shongolollo (“millipede”) and the organisation Umhlaba Vision Foundation, which focuses on student and youth development - will be working here together, getting through to young people via their shared enthusiasm for football and promoting sporting values such as team spirit, fair play, and respect for rules. At the same time this is a way to encourage basic understanding of health issues (especially AIDS prevention) and economic fundamentals - the only way to open the door to new chances in life.
How it all began
October 2008: The mission of the Philipp Lahm Foundation is to promote sport and education, and building and supporting football training facilities for disadvantaged youth in Africa is part of the Foundation’s programme. After an extended preparatory phase, two of the Foundation’s directors flew to Johannesburg (South Africa) and saw for themselves how important it was to give support to a township project not far from the town of Krugersdorp.
They had been told about the settlements “Soul City” and “Tudor Shaft” by Imme Thom, director of the non-profit organisation “Shongolollo” (“millipede” in Afrikaans), so they went there on a tour of inspection. When it comes to quality of life, these two “shack towns”, as the townships are often called, are right at the bottom of the list. This is where the very poorest of the poor live. There’s no employment, and no hope either; no real social structures; no electricity.
The water supply at the central pumps is basic but more or less functional, and there are toilet huts at collection points – one per family group.The only things they have in plenty are violence, frustration, cheap home-brewed beer (sometimes brewed in car batteries to increase the “kick”), garbage and fears for the future. But at least there's a space where boys can kick a football around.
Imme Thom and Zarina Bahdur, director of the youth development organisation “Umhlaba Vision Foundation”, suggested ways in which their organisations could work together with the Philipp Lahm Foundation, and mapped out a plan for a football ground with an organised training programme. We considered a range of alternatives: a hard surface pitch; a rubber infill surface (which could be constructed by welding together strips of material from the conveyor belts of a nearby abandoned mine); synthetic turf; natural turf.
An exciting task was beginning, and we all had a lot to learn….
Building up a dependable partnership
January 2009: A number of issues had arisen that needed to be carefully looked into before our directors paid their next visit to our partners in Soul City. This time we were joined by the authorities from the community and town administration: everyone could see that community development in two shack towns would bring a lot of opportunities.
There wasn’t a building anywhere that we could hold our meeting in, so we had our discussions standing on the space which was to become the football pitch: Zarina (photo left: standing on the far right) with women from the shack town and Imme (photo below). After ten minutes we were hit by a real South African summer shower – which made us realise how difficult it is to draw up plans and discuss details when you don’t have a roof over your head.
But we weren’t going to be deterred by such problems, and we sought shelter in Obi’s pub. It was soon clear that there was only one viable option for the football pitch: a FIFA standard hard surface pitch. The construction costs of both synthetic and natural turf would be beyond the Foundation’s budget, and the upkeep would cost far more than any local sponsoring could possibly provide.
The first plans were drafted for a football pitch plus containers to be used as office/storeroom and changing rooms.
The end result is always bound to turn out very different.
We gave the go-ahead for the construction bid – bearing in mind that the ground was to be completed by the end of June, in time for everything to get going in the South African spring season.
Planning a sustainable sport & education project
April 2009: A Germany-based organisation such as the Philipp Lahm Foundation can only implement a project like this successfully if it has dependable partners who can deal with everything on location. The cooperation structure for the Shongi Soccer project:
“Shongolollo” is responsible for the organisational framework at the football ground. This non-profit organisation offers psychosocial and therapeutic programmes for traumatised children and young people in need.
The “Umhlaba Vision Foundation” (UVF) has worked out a multi-step model for implementing the programme in accordance with the Philipp Lahm Foundation’s fundamental aim to promote sport and education. In addition to football skills, the training units emphasize the underlying sporting values – team spirit, fair play, and respect for rules. And other issues are also included, such as health matters and AIDS prevention.
SIFE (“Students in Free Enterprise”) offers a further stage, with basic courses in IT and business fundamentals. The representatives of the community and town administration have approved the construction of the football pitch and designated the location. The administrative authorities, local politicians and representatives of the NGOs involved held long and intensive discussion sessions to decide on the best procedure. It is of fundamental importance to the Philipp Lahm Foundation that the decision-making process should be driven by the people involved locally.
The football ground takes shape
May 2009: Now that the final decisions had been made about the pitch and the project development, the next step was to select the construction firm from the bids that had been submitted.
But before the construction work could get started, we had to clean up the ground with the assistance of a group of volunteers. Thanks to all the helping hands, it only took a few hours for all the rubbish to be collected into 60 big rubbish bags. Within a very short time the rough kickabout area started to take on the size and appearance of a FIFA standard football pitch.
Handover and inauguration of the football ground
July 2009: While on July 4th the USA celebrated Independence Day, a special celebration was taking place in Soul City, because this was the day of the first official football games on the new pitch. Alas the festivities were marred by sadness over the fateful events of recent days: a fire had broken out in one of the huts, and spread to ten others. Open fires are the only way to keep out the cold of the winter nights, so such accidents are almost inevitable. A three-year-old child died in the flames. Out of respect for the family, the celebration for the football ground was kept low-key.
The last picture shows the two second-hand containers, the white celebration tent and a prayer tent contributed by the German Society for Sandplay Therapy on the initiative of Shongolollo and Imme Thom. The container on the left is where the caretaker lives with his family; the one on the right is the provisional office, storeroom and changing room.
