News
2012-01-10
At the end of another inspiring year of growing dreams through football, all we can say is thank you. We thank BHP Billiton for being our foundation, the rock on which everything we do is built. Thanks, too, to the many other partners who have invested in communities, schools and children, sharing DreamBags, grandstands and fields, and above all precious time and passion.
No dreams could ever grow without the energy provided by the Department of Basic Education – at national, provincial and district level. We’ve done great things with the Gauteng Department of Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation and with the Development Bank of Southern Africa. We have now invested close on R30-million in townships and rural areas. And looking at our prospects for 2012, there is so much more to come.
The best way we can thank all you dream growers is to share with you how much pleasure we, the Dreamfields team, get from the work that you have enabled us to do. And so we’ve asked each of the team to share their favourite memory from 2011.
Thanks for making the growing of dreams possible.
The Moment: Dreamfields ran a programme of DreamEvents for young girls in partnership with the Provincial Government of the Western Cape. Eight schools played in a final tournament in Cape Town, and the winner was from Leeu-Gamka, a tiny Karoo town of just 4 000 people.
John Perlman’s Memory: “At the final whistle, the joy on the faces of the girls was unforgettable. But my fondest memory was chatting by phone to the coach, Mellyn Willemse, a few days later. He painted a vivid picture of the girls doing slow laps of honour round the town in the back of a bakkie, holding their trophy and medals high, with every child in the school running and cheering behind them. Dreamfields slogan is We Grow Dreams – I really wished I’d been there to see this made real in Leeu-Gamka.
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2011-11-07
When the 17 schools taking part in the Gauteng Champions League Festival marched out onto the green grass at the Eldorado Park Stadium, they did so with an extra snap in the stride. That’s because they had earned their place at the Festival the hard way – by giving their best, week in and week out, and winning their local DreamLeagues. Each school walked with the air of champions – which is what they were.
Dreamfields has hosted more than 185 DreamEvents around South Africa, all memorable and special in their own way. But the Gauteng Champions League Festival may well turn out to be one our most significant tournaments. For the past year we have tried to direct everything Dreamfields does towards our most important long-term goal: building up sustainable primary schools football through well-run weekly DreamLeagues.
And so when our partners at the Gauteng Department of Sport, Arts Culture and Recreation (GSACR) suggested we host a tournament for top schools, we agreed that qualification for the event should be restricted to DreamLeague winners. We wanted to give clusters providing schools with weekly league play an additional incentive.
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2011-11-03
The teachers were already excited as they headed for our DreamField near the Kruger Park – looking forward to a day of learning new skills which they could share with their school teams at football practice the following week. But that quiet excitement shot off the radar screen when they saw who would be coaching them.
Ex-Orlando Pirates coach Ruud Krol had travelled with Dreamfields to share his vast knowledge with 42 teachers from the villages of Acornhoek and Hluvukani. And when the teachers saw the winner of three trophies with the Buccaneers waiting to work with them, the effect was immediate.
“They instantly felt like they were going to be champions because they had the inspiration of learning from one of South Africa’s top coaches,” says Dreamfields’ Silas Mashava. “We were all very excited to realise we would be given lessons by someone who was a top player and a top coach,” says Mutshutshu Mmbude, chairman of school sports in Acornhoek.
In 2011, Dreamfields has provided 382 teachers and school sports assistants with an opportunity to attend an introductory course on coaching young footballers. Participants have come from Tshisahulu in the north and Stellenbosch in the south, from Lichtenberg in the North West and Tjakastad in the east. Most of these opportunities have been provided by Discovery Vitality.
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2011-09-15
It was a sight that the little Karoo town of Leeu-Gamka will never forgot – 15 young girls standing in the back of a moving bakkie, holding their shiny new trophy up high for all to see. Residents on the streets, brought out of their houses by the noise, cheering them on. And running behind the small truck, the entire student body of Leeu-Gamka Primary, dancing and singing in delight.
Leeu-Gamka is a tiny town on the N1, south of Beaufort West, a place most people whizz past on their way to and from Cape Town. The town has a population of just 4 000 – number of schools, just one, going up to Grade 9. But what a school Leeu-Gamka Primary has turned out to be.
With just 600 children this school defied the odds and finished top of a Western Cape-wide tournament for primary school girls, organised by Dreamfields in partnership with the Provincial Government of the Western Cape (PGWC). The PGWC wanted to find a way to engage girls in their young teens in discussions about sexuality, self-confidence and teenage pregnancy and approached Dreamfields as partners.
Together – and working with the Cape Town organisation Life Zone – we put together a programme of eight regional DreamEvents, where girls would enjoy a day of football, life skills education and discussion with their peers about important and sensitive stuff. The discussions were facilitated by a skilled Western Cape government team, led by Sis Thandi Mpumbi-Sibhukwana
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2011-09-12
Our motto at the Dreamfields Project is We Grow Dreams – and we chose those words very carefully. Whenever we hand over a DreamBag to an excited team, bring schools together for a DreamEvent, or celebrate the launch of a field, we don’t see this as a dream completed. In our view the work of growing that dream has just started.
That’s why we recently went back to the Mpumalanga village of Tjakastad, where months earlier we had built a DreamField and provided 13 schools with DreamBags. And that’s why we took Orlando Pirates legend Jerry Sikosana with us.
The Tjakastad field had been jointly funded by the Old Mutual Foundation and the Multi-Agency Grants Initiative (MAGI), and the community had won the facility as a prize by taking part in the TV reality show Kwanda. The MAGI wanted to make sure that football dreams in Tjakastad continued to grow and so we decided to run a coaching workshop for teachers from each school in the community.
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2011-05-10
More than 50 teams which play matches every week, brand new kit for 840 players and special academy coaching for the most gifted – if you are a young footballer with dreams, then Kagiso, Gauteng is the place to be.
One of Dreamfields’ flagship projects, the Silverstar Soccer Stars, has just been given another massive push by the company behind the initiative. Silverstar Casino last year invested massively in schools football for the communities of Kagiso, Munsieville and Swaneville. The gaming company created an under-12 DreamLeague for 23 primary schools and a similar structure at under-16 for 10 local secondaries.
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2011-05-03
We hope that you have seen The Dreamfields advert that has been running on e.tv and the e-News channel. We’ve been getting lots of responses, including one from a Cape Town teacher, who sent us this letter:
Dear Dreamfields team,
I saw the advert on e.tv and thought I'd just send you a quick mail. Our school, Ysterplaat Primary, took part in a DreamEvent two years ago. Soccer and discipline in the school improved drastically since that day.
One DreamBag gave us the opportunity to play matches twice a week and coach one team for each age group. We as a school kept the kit and wash it after every match. We bought a few more boots to be able to accommodate more children and we bought some extra shins and socks.
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2011-04-07
On a blustery early April morning in Guguletu, Cape Town four teams of township boys watched as their DreamBags of new soccer kit were unpacked, each hoping that the coach would remember their favourite number and pass them that special shirt. As they pulled on the boots and stepped onto the field of play, they took the Dreamfields Project past a magical milestone.
We have now invested over R25-million in South Africa’s communities, more than three quarters of that in small towns and rural areas. And we really have covered the length and breadth of the country, planting the seeds of young people’s dreams in townships, informal settlements and faraway villages.
While the Guguletu boys were making their way to their first ever DreamEvent, at the other end of the country Robert Phidza was opening up his tool shed at our two fields in Tshisahulu, Venda. Phidza does a great job maintaining the fields and there’s always extra work to be done after the weekend’s games.
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2011-03-08
For young football lovers across South Africa, Wednesdays are never going to be the same again. Because Wednesdays are going to be special days, afternoons devoted to growing their dreams through soccer.
The first phase of the Dreamfields Project, which began in October 2007, involved three years of handing over DreamBags, running DreamEvents and building fields – R24-million invested in communities and schools, most of it in rural areas.
Now we have set off down a new five-year road, with our founding sponsor BHP Billiton committing the massive sum of R15-million to this cause. This amazing gesture comes from BHP Billiton’s belief that sport helps to build better schools. And with better schools you get stronger communities.
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2011-03-01
If you want to know what impact the Rally to Read initiative has had on rural schools for more than a decade, then visit www.rallytoread.co.za, and read what the teachers and pupils have to say.
“I was in the dark,” says HZ Makhanya, a teacher at Mvangatini Primary in Mpumalanga. “You came to my rescue as torch-bearers to enable me. Now I can teach without fear.” This positive energy clearly rubs off on the children. “I am proud of who I am,” says Sibusiso Sigawuke, one of his pupils. “I know I’m going to make it in life.”
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