Soccer Without Borders Uganda
Amani Football Academy
Project Summary: The Amani Football Academy was started in the Spring of 2008 as a collaboration between refugee youth leaders and Soccer Without Borders. The program grew from one men's team aged 18-24 to 6 teams. Currently, Amani provides soccer instruction and life-skills seminars for 120 refugee youth living in the Nsambya and Katwe areas of Kampala. The youth in the program hail predominantly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi.
Background Information: "Amani" is the Swahili word for Peace, and the Amani Football Academy aims to foster peace by using soccer to develop community and positive relationships. The program serves urban refugees youth aged 8-24 who fled conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. A majority of the program participants fled to Uganda seeking safety in the refugee camps in Uganda's countryside. After finding life in the camps unsatisfactory, these "urban refugees" opted to leave the camps to try their hand in Uganda's capital Kampala.
Amani is run by a passionate committee of volunteers trained by SWB who are all refugees aged 18-30. A majority of the youth in the program are unemployed and lack the opportunity to study, even though many of them were successful students, merchants and professionals in their native countries.
Project History: The program began in March of 2008 and started with one men's team. It has since expanded to include two 18-24 year old men's teams, a women's team, a U-16 boys team, a U-12 boys team and a U-10 boys team, with plans for an U-14 girls teams in the works. SWB trained local coaches to take over the program, and also, to train other interested youth to use soccer as tool for youth development. Currently, there are 8 trained volunteer coaches on staff at the academy. The program rents a field for three hours a day where members can come to play soccer, connect with one another and engage in monthly educational workshops.
The primary objectives of the Amani Football Academy are the following:
- Provide a safe community space for recreation and informal education
- Use sport as a platform for education on vital topics such as health and conflict resolution
- Organize the refugee youth
- Integrate the refugee population with Ugandan nationals through games, practices and shared events
- Connect children and youth with caring adults and peers
- Provide positive activities to avoid idleness
As the program has gotten more established, it has served as a platform for more intensive life-skills courses. The women's team participated in the three month long Girls For A Change program with SWB and Amani staff in the Spring of 2008 with great success.
Project Vision:
Going forward, some of the key objectives of the Amani Football Academy are:
• To rent an office space that can house all equipment and provide a consistent classroom for life-skills sessions
• To provide proper soccer equipment to all members
• To train more coaches in the principles of youth development andeffective coaching
• To expand programming for girls