Football For Hope Centre

Quick weekend update. I spent Saturday and Sunday in Harare, Khayelitsha at the Football For Hope Centre. Annie and I held a community meeting on Saturday morning to discuss the upcoming community opening and we spent the afternoon attempting to build tree cages (we gave up after realizing it would be virtually impossible to build the cages without a professional) and painting fences. We worked alongside many local workers and attempted to communicate via hand gestures and broken English. After a long day of manual labor, Annie and I had only managed to apply the first coat to one of many fences, so we returned on Sunday with the rest of my housemates to finish painting the fences. As the November 28th community opening and December 5th official centre opening approach, we will be spending the next couple of weekends in Khayelitsha.

After returning from Khayelitsha, we hosted a welcome braai at our new house. Lots of GRS coworkers attended with their families and we had loads of delicious food. The braai went so well that we are already planning to host a big Thanksgiving dinner.

The past two weeks have flown by! Everyone is swamped at work as the December 4-6 weekend approaches. The December weekend is a huge event for FIFA because the World Cup Draw takes place on December 4 in Cape Town. It is also a huge weekend for Grassroot Soccer since we were selected as the Football For Hope (FFH) Centre Host in Khayelitsha. FFH is the main element of a strategic alliance between FIFA and streetfootballworld and it is a movement that uses the power of the game for positive social change. The FFH Movement is a part of FIFA's "20 Centres for 2010" official World Cup campaign.

Most of my time over the next three weeks will be dedicated to preparing for the big weekend. As the final touches come together for the Centre, GRS has started to focus on the logistics for the weekend. I'm spending a lot of time putting together an agenda for several visitors that are coming for the weekend. I've learned that planning events in Cape Town is much more difficult than planning an event in the States!!