Celebrating Six Hundred DreamBags at Tshisahulu DreamEvent

2009-05-27

In May 2008, the children of Tshisahulu, and their neighbours from the villages of Lwamondo and Duthuni, gathered to play football on the first two football fields built by the Dreamfields Project.
And one year later, they returned in even greater numbers to celebrate the next step taken in growing their soccer dreams – greater numbers because another 12 DreamBags were handed out to new schools. And that took the total of DreamBags donated countrywide past the 600 mark.

There are now 30 schools in the district which have been equipped with DreamBags. And this month they will be organised into leagues – primary schools and secondaries – which will play regular matches to determine the true champions of Tshisahulu.
We used the Tshisahulu DreamEvent to take stock of the state of our first fields. Both pitches were playing very true, and the trees planted around the facility are in good shape. We also did some innovation.

On soil-stabilised fields, line markings are difficult to maintain, so we created permanent implants in the sand to mark the field, using old conveyor belts discarded by the mining industry. So far so good! If this works, and we believe it should, this could be a big step towards our goal of creating low maintenance soccer fields.

The Tshisahulu DreamFields owe their existence to Vhonani Mufamadi, a businessman who grew up in the village and played football whenever he could.

Ideco, the company which Mufamadi heads, is at the cutting edge of using fingerprints — and fingerprint technology — for access to buildings and information. In 2007 Ideco listed on the JSE and marked the occasion by contributing more than R800 000 to soccer development in Tshisahulu.

Mufamadi is now excited by the prospect of regular league soccer in the area’s schools. “I realise now that this project could have a far greater impact than I had thought at the start,” he says. “We can actually get sustainable football going in the form of the leagues that we hope to run. And the expansion of the programme to new schools tells us that the interest goes way beyond what we thought before.”
Help us provide more DreamBags and DreamFields to those who need them most.

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