Who We Are, What We Do
Who We Are, What We Do
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Better schools through sport, better communities through better schools. That has been the goal of the Dreamfields Project since 2007. Dreamfields is committed to whole school education – where good quality teaching is matched and reinforced by a rich and inclusive life outside the classroom. We want to make sport a positive and vibrant part of educational life. Dreamfields gives more than 65 000 learners the chance to play weekly football and netball, to grow their dreams through sport, and we operate in 396 schools in nine provinces. Dreamfields also employs 185 young people as community coaches to run our DreamLeagues and grow their own dreams in the process. We have raised more than R150-million to enrich the educational and personal lives of South Africa's children. There are four pillars to our work. We provide young footballers and future netball stars with all the equipment they need - boots and sneakers, full sets of kit, medals and trophies, posts and poles. We believe that every child who wants to play should play, and so we set up mass participation DreamLeagues in every school where we work - well-organised five-a-side football and mini-netball, week in and out. Kids need coaches and so we run coaching workshops and hire young adults to run the DreamLeagues. And while inclusiveness is our founding principle, we also inspire excellence by running special clinics for the best players in each sport, and by hosting regular DreamEvent tournaments.
Grow Dreams With Us
Grow Dreams With Us
Playing weekly football and netball in our DreamLeagues teaches young people wonderful life lessons about teamwork and discipline and enriches the educational life in their schools. For just R200 you can put a ball at the feet of a team of young rural footballers. For R650 you could give a netball team in a township school a trophy and medals to play for.
Please visit our BackaBuddy page below to donate.
Or get in touch with us at: johnperlman@dreamfieldsproject.org
Better schools through sport, better communities through better schools.
DreamLeagues
We believe that children should play sport regularly because it is through weekly football and netball – rather than knockout play – that children learn those valuable life lessons about discipline, determination and teamwork. At the start of each school year, we get the DreamLeagues going by holding a school assembly. 'Who wants to play football? Who wants to play netball?' Wherever we go these questions produce a forest of hands. Working with teachers and community coaches, we split up the best players and make them captains in order make teams as even as possible. The captains choose teams, the players decide on a team name, and then the play and the dreaming begins.
Coaches and Coaching
The teachers and young adults in the communities where Dreamfields work have their dreams too. Some love football, some are passionate about netball, and they all care deeply about the children around them. We run all kinds of coaching courses as we look to build the sustainability of our programme in our partner communities. The foundation is laid with a workshop where everyone learns how to run the DreamLeagues and deliver basic training sessions in each sport. From there we move on to specialised courses in football and netball coaching, and in refereeing and umpiring. We hire unemployed youth to work as community coaches in the schools close to where they live.
DreamBags
Even though we have witnessed this more than 3 600 times, there is one part of our work at Dreamfields that never ever gets old - the expressions on the faces of the children when they open their very first DreamBag. A DreamBag contains playing kit for football or netball - shirts, skirts, shorts and a socks; shoes or boots; balls and shin guards; and cones for marking out training sessions. It's all brand new and most of our children are wearing proper kit for the very first time. Nothing belongs to individual players - the schools look after the DreamBag and make sure this bag of possibilities is there when the next group of learners move up a year and step into the Dreamfields system.
Inspiring Excellence
The DreamLeague programme, in its essence, is about inclusivity - every child who wants to play gets a chance to do so. But we also believe in encouraging children to excel. Dreamfields does this in a number of ways. First, every footballer and netball player wants to play for the school team and we create DreamEvent tournaments and inter-school leagues to make this happen. Then every year we hold an Excellence Clinic where the best footballers and netball players from each school come together for high-level competition and coaching. We are seeing more and more of our dreamers winning places in provincial teams and we back them with funding and equipment support.
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