The Mfuwe Mags (and beyond!) - Annual Review

First of all, as always, a Massive THANK YOU to all for your ongoing support and generosity during these uncertain times; the difference your contributions make to the lives of the boys and girls in Mfuwe is enormous and continues to grow as the club develops.

I wanted to update everyone on where your money has been going, what we have achieved over the last year and the exciting plans and developments for the future. In terms of a review of what your generosity has facilitated its probably easiest to just put it as chronological bullet points……

With your donations we have:

Supplied 25 pairs of hard pitch football boots

Supplied new home and away football strips, netball kit, footballs, training shoes, training equipment, goal nets etc.for the Mags.

Provided monthly funding to ensure travel costs, match fees etc for three years.

Established the under 15 Mags and the Mfuwe Mags Queens.

Supplied kit and boots for the under 15 team and Queens.

Replaced the boots for the senior team (the first lot had been worn out!!)

Supplied new footballs to the Mags manufactured by ‘Alive and Kicking’ in Lusaka and subsequently supplied new footballs from ‘A&K’ to all the clubs in Mfuwe

Provided a new laptop for the Club Executive for minutes, admin. Record keeping etc.

Graded and levelled the JK Stadium pitch to provide a better/safer surface to play on.

Built a new secure kit store to keep all the equipment safe.

So, ‘what’s next?’ I hear you ask…..

The Future

The rise of ‘the Mags’ has made us realise that the other teams in the area (particularly the younger age groups) have very limited kit and need help so that Project Luangwa can resurrect the local under 12 and under 15 leagues that shut down in the pandemic because of a lack of funds.

One of the main reasons for wanting to resurrect the leagues is that, in order for the kids to play in them they must attend school. As nearly all the kids in Mfuwe are football mad, being able to play is a big incentive for them. There is not much for the kids to do outside school by way of recreation, so if they are playing football not only does it mean that they have to attend school, have an activity and focus outside of the classroom, they aren’t illegally fishing, cutting timber, poaching, drinking, taking drugs, prostituting themselves, which sadly are the choices that some of them take. Similarly their parents and guardians get involved with the clubs/teams and also come to support them which all adds to the wider sense of community.

Unfortunately we don’t have the funds to buy new gear for all the teams but happily we have had help from some fantastic charities and some amazing individuals. We’ve had boxes of kit from Kits4Causes, a set of junior strips from the NUFoundation, people have been rummaging in their cupboards and arranging kit drop offs at clubs, schools and so on to provide boots, trainers etc. Special thanks to Ellie’s wonderful colleague Danielle Noble and the boys at South Shields FC who have collected strips, kit and equipment. Ross Chapman of Chapman Dental in Whickham, who is collecting in his practice having seen my interview on Look North. Finally, massive thanks to Wing Cmdr Neil Hope and Flt Lt Mark Smales based at RAF Shawbury in Shropshire, who set up ‘Taking Football to Africa’. They have supplied boxes and boxes of fantastic kit. It will all go down a storm!

We are taking as much as we can with us to Mfuwe when we head out in April, but I’m delighted that we have been accepted by the National Police Aid Charity to put gear into their shared charity container heading to Lusaka in April, so I am busy boxing everything up in readiness for taking it down to NPAC HQ in Mansfield. Consequently at the moment the garage looks like a storage warehouse for Sports Direct!

In February Ian Macallan, CEO of Project Luangwa visited us in Newcastle and we put on a joint presentation for some of our local sponsors to give them an update on everything we are doing in Mfuwe and tell them a bit more about the amazing work PL do in education and women’s health.

From the outset We have tried to make this as much as possible a collaboration between the NE of England and the NE of Zambia and have been blown away by the wonderful support we’ve had so far from people in our region. What has also been amazing is that at every turn there seem to be remarkable NE connections……Ian Macallan, CEO of Project Luangwa, is from Durham, Ben Sadler CEO of Alive and Kicking grew up in Benwell and has recently moved back from London to live in Heaton. Neil Hope down at RAF Shawbury is a Toon Fan originally from Berwick, Mark Smales from Middlesborough (who grew up in Newcastle) and happily even Alan Shearer has got behind what we are doing! And then, very recently in the Guardian an article on Grace McCatty at SAFC Ladies talking about her experiences of taking football kit to Zambia……I am trying to contact her to see if there is any common ground for future projects particularly to help develop the women’s game in the district.

The development of women’s football is something we are really happy to help promote, so we are delighted by the formation of the Mfuwe Mags Queens and the opportunity this provides for some of the young women in the area. We are hopeful that the team will be registered with FAZ for next season to participate in the local league. The creation of ‘the Queens’ has also provided the opportunity for Ellie, with the help of PL and some of her Mfuwe medical contacts, to provide a safe environment for teaching the girls on many aspects of female health.

We are also keen to develop our links with Ben at ‘Alive and Kicking’ to hopefully establish a ball ‘library’ for the local teams to use. A&K also run courses for coaches to help not only with football coaching but also to identify and support players with mental health issues and we hope that we can set up one of these courses in Mfuwe in due course.

Finally, A&K manufacture footballs to bespoke designs, so we will be running an art workshop in Mfuwe incorporating this, as well as possibly doing the same in a couple of schools in Newcastle. If any of the balls then go into production they can be sold to raise money for the project.

Excitingly, at the start of this week I had a very productive meeting with John Smith, Director of Partnerships at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle. John is a maths teacher and former head of football at the School. He seemed very positive about the school getting involved in the project. Our first joint step will be a football boot/kit collection, but moving forward we hope that the school will commit to fundraising for the project and, looking down the road, it may even offer an opportunity for pupils from the school to visit Mfuwe and see first hand everything that is going on there and experience the amazing place for themselves.

Now ‘the Mags’ are on a stable footing and the mechanism for getting kit out to all the teams in Mfuwe seems to be coming together, our next project is to try and provide the boys and girls with some decent sports facilities to give them a chance to develop their skills and to show just how good they are. It is also to try and reduce the number of injuries caused by the playing surfaces they use at the moment, many of which are ‘uneven’ at best!

This will obviously require a different level of fundraising altogether from what we have done so far and we are brainstorming to try and come up with ideas of how best to raise funds; we are certainly very happy to receive suggestions and offers! Something we are discussing with Ian at Project Luangwa, and potentially one other NGO in Mfuwe, is a joint venture to provide teaching spaces, accommodation, volunteer housing and sports facilities (pitches, running track etc) for the use of the wider community. Very early days at the moment, but we will be meeting up with everyone to discuss in more detail in April, so…..watch this space!

Finally, the stART Foundation was set up to support conservation through art as well as facilitating education for underprivileged children through workshops and artists commissions. Besides the workshops, this manifested itself by providing funding for boarding fees, uniforms, books, materials etc for 20 children, ensuring they could go to school.

Unfortunately there has been a parting of the ways between the stART Foundation in Lusaka and stART Art in Mfuwe which has meant that the Foundation will no longer be funding these children. This all happened just before the start of the new school year in Zambia.

stART Foundation agreed to honour their commitments for this year, but for logistical reasons they were only able to provide equipment and uniform supplies to half the children. Happily, thanks to a couple of specific donations, we have been able to step in and supply funding for the other 10 kids.

Moving forward, plans are afoot to set up ‘South Luangwa Conservation through Art’ (SLCA), hopefully linked to one of the NGO’s in Mfuwe to continue with the workshops, and provide the ongoing funding for the children’s education. We’re looking forward to developing these plans in April when we go back to Mfuwe. In the meantime we will be helping financially as much as we can.

One definite consequence of this is that the football and netball teams are no longer stART Art and have officially changed their name to the ‘Mfuwe Mags’ - Howay the Lads and Lasses!

#mfuwemags #projectluangwa #kits4causes #takingfootballtoafrica #slca #aliveandkicking

stArt Art Sports Club - The Mfuwe Mags

August Update

First of all, a Massive THANK YOU to all for your ongoing support and generosity during these uncertain times; without it the boys and girls at stART would have stOPPED many months ago. As it is they are all fully kitted out, the senior football team were able to complete their season, finishing fourth in the league and the netball team have been able to join a new league in Chipata.

We were lucky enough to gain some traction for the story with local North East media which generated a bit of interest, and I am delighted that as a result, Penny Petroleum have agreed to provide funding for the club, which will cover the travel costs, registration fees, match fees etc for the senior boys and girls teams for the next three years. This is fantastic and I can’t thank Dave and Louise enough for their amazing generosity.

The consequence of this is that the wonderful contributions that everyone else has made/continue to make via standing orders will allow the Executive Committee to plan for the club to provide younger age group teams for both netball and football.

Obviously, growing the club in this way needs to be carefully handled and fully funded so that any growth can be sustained in the future. It also requires improvement of the playing facilities and help from more coaching staff which will obviously require funding, so the job is not done yet!!

So, what news of the teams…..?

As I mentioned above, the senior boys finished the season in 4th position in Division 3 of the Eastern Region. We had been given to understand that the top four teams would be promoted, but in the event FAZ only allowed the top club to move up to Division 2. This was disappointing, but given that we missed the first five games of last season hopes are high for a promotion push in 2022/23. The lads are currently in training for the Independence Cup Competition which takes place throughout August and September.

Unfortunately the netball season has not gone well, academic pressures and exams meant that the girls were only able to attend one weekend round of matches in Chipata, so everything has been a little intermittent on this front. Happily exams finish this week and the girls are raring to get back onto the court.

The junior boys and girls continue to attend training and are always keen to play and learn. Thanks to a specific donation from Jonathan and Katriona, who we met in South Luangwa National Park in March, we have been able to buy boots and strips for the under 15 boys football team. They will be absolutely delighted !!

Future Plans.

The objective remains to facilitate the growth of the club to provide sporting opportunities for as many of the stART boys and girls as possible. As described above your generosity and support is making this a reality.

I am lucky enough to be heading back out to Mfuwe at the end of August (Ellie is very jealous!) to deliver the new kit and to let everyone know the good news about the funding. Jeremy Armstrong, Daily Mirror Ace Reporter, is coming out with me to see what all the fuss is about and to hopefully further spread the word about all things stART. I’m hoping to also send an update from Mfuwe to Look North to keep the story alive back in the Toon.

We were rather let down by the operator who was going to help with the sponsored bike ride, so this is on hold, but we are hoping to get it back on track at some point. The restoration of the house is also on the back burner as the realities of this became apparent. Again we will be taking this on closer to Ellie’s retirement so that we have time to use it and welcome friends to the Valley!

In September I am dragging my increasingly complaining frame from Newcastle to South Shields on the Great North Run (I suspect my last one!) Needless to say I am fundraising for stART so if you would like to sponsor me that would be fantastic! My just giving page is still up and running. www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/start-art. Alternatively you can make donations through Project Luangwa into their UK Bank account (Details of their Metro Bank account are on the PL Website under the ‘Donate’ Tab.)www.projectluangwa.org Please use stART as a reference for any donations you make this way. If you could also let me know you have done it so that I can tell Ian to look out for your donation.

I am really grateful to Ian at PL as this arrangement has meant I haven’t had to set up a charity for stART which I wasn’t really looking forward to doing. PL do amazing work around the Luangwa Valley helping children into education, building schools, sponsoring places for Further Education etc. Check out their website to see the wonderful stuff they do.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want to know any more about the Club and how you can help: My friends and family will vouch for the fact that I am more than happy to talk about it!!

Very many thanks for taking the time to read this and for your amazing ongoing generosity and support.

Best wishes,

Crispin.

Update

First of all, a Massive THANK YOU to all for your generous donations, as a result of which we have been able to provide an enormous amount of kit to the boys and girls at SASC. The first priority was the provision of new football boots for the senior football team and happily Ellie’s sister Ruth was able to deliver 28 pairs of hard-pitch boots when she visited Mfuwe in March.

While the Bond girls were delivering boots, I was back in the UK arranging the next round of kit collection. Particular thanks must go to Steve Trainor of UK Extrusion for sponsoring all the strips for the senior football and netball teams. Many thanks also to Dave and Ann Gunning for their extremely generous donation and also to the wonderful Judith Jeffries for her tenacious pursuit of kit and equipment donations from the Beacon of Light and other unsuspecting sports outlets!

As a result of all your amazing generosity and support, I was able to return to Mfuwe in early April with five enormous bags bulging with kit which we passed on to the SASC Executive Committee at a joyful presentation event with all the boys and girls in attendance…..This was the launch of the Mfuwe Mags!

So, what news of the teams…..?

The senior boys team continue to defy the odds and currently lie in 4th position in Division 3 of the Eastern Region with six games left to play. The top 4 teams are promoted to the National 2nd Division - the third tier of Zambian football. This is a position made all the more remarkable by the fact that the oldest member of our team is 19, with several of the squad only 15 years old, playing in a senior men’s league. Two of the 15 year old members of the squad, Gedson Nguni and Elijah Banda made it to the last round of selection in Lusaka for the Zambian National under 16 team. Unfortunately they weren’t selected, but it’s great that they were noticed and gives hope to others for the future.

The Netball season began last weekend with the girls getting off to a winning start. Their talents have been recognised in the Eastern Region and they have now been invited to join a higher league based in Chipata, the largest town in the area, just over 100km from Mfuwe.

The junior boys and girls continue to attend training and are always keen to play and learn. The target for the ongoing fundraising efforts is to kit out the under 12 and under 15 teams with boots/shoes and strips/bibs.

Future Plans.

The objective is to facilitate the growth of the club to provide sporting opportunities for as many of the stART boys and girls as possible. In order to achieve this we want to help the amazing Executive Committee to develop the structure of the club so that there are under 12, under 15 and under 19 age group teams for both football and netball. Simultaneously we want the current senior teams to continue to develop and to build upon their successes to date.

This ambition will require further sustained funding to cover the costs of improving facilities, additional coaching and an increasingly large transport budget. There are fund raising initiatives afoot, including plans for a sponsored bike ride from Lusaka to Mfuwe in May 2023 #(Don’t)buytheboysabus **(on which, more to follow!) and refurbishment of a house in beautiful Kapani, by the gates of the stunning South Luangwa National Park, for future rental, but we would obviously be delighted to hear from anyone interested in getting involved and ideally who can commit to some long term financial support for the Club.

In order to make the prospect of providing funding as attractive as possible (aside from the warm glow of helping others!) our friends at Project Luangwa have very kindly offered to accept larger donations on behalf of SASC. PL are a Registered UK Charity with Gift Aid status, so any donations made through them will be as tax efficient as possible. They are also partnered with ‘Generosity in Action’ in the USA if you wish to make a donation from the States. PL do amazing work around the Luangwa Valley helping children into education, building schools, sponsoring places for Further Education etc. Check out their website www.projectluangwa.org to see the wonderful stuff they do.

Please email me if you want to donate through PL so that I can let them know to expect it. crispinm-j@hotmail.co.uk

To ensure that we don’t overburden them with admin, I have promised Ian at PL that we won’t be flooding him with individual donations of less than £500 (Fingers crossed!!) but please don’t let that put you off! My just giving page is still up and running for smaller donations…… any amount is very gratefully received….. www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/start-art

For now, donations sent to my Just Giving page will be used to buy kit in the UK for delivery to Mfuwe when we next visit. Once we have kitted everyone out we will group donations together and send them through to PL to maximize the gift aid.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want to know any more about the Club and how you can help: My friends and family will vouch for the fact that I am more than happy to talk about it!!

Very many thanks for taking the time to read this and for your ongoing support.

Best wishes, Crispin.

** #(Don’t)buy the boys a bus began life as #buytheboysabus but I have been very strongly advised by several long standing South Luangwa residents that for reasons of liability, insurance, maintenance etc this is not a good idea. So instead, we hope to raise funds to secure regular and reliable transport for the teams with a local bus company so that in the future the boys and girls don’t have to travel to matches like this…….

CM-J / 5th May 2022

stArt Art Sports Club

The Present

My wife Ellie, a doctor who grew up in Zambia until the age of seven, came to Mfuwe in the South Luangwa Valley in Zambia at the start of 2022 to spend four months as a volunteer doctor at the Kapani Rural Health Clinic. She is on sabbatical from her role as a Palliative Care Specialist at both St Benedict’s Hospice in Sunderland and the CHIPS Paediatric Palliative Care Service at the RVI in Newcastle. I joined her in Zambia in early February.

An overheard conversation between my wife and the remarkable Pam Guhrs Carr over dinner has set me off on a totally unexpected and exciting path.

Pam is a renowned Zambian artist, whose father Norman Carr was largely responsible for the creation of the National Parks in Zambia. She lives and works in Kapani, which was the original lodge camp at the gateway to the South Luangwa National Park. Happily for us she is our fabulous neighbour during our time here.

The dinner conversation centred around the plight of the stArt Art Football Team, which has grown out of a local arts project for disadvantaged Zambian children (the stArt Foundation). Although currently lying sixth in their league, having missed four games because they could not afford to travel to the fixtures, sadly they are on the verge of having to withdraw from the competition because of a lack of funding.

Art and football are my two passions, so it was an easy decision for me to offer to help, initially pledging to meet the costs of transport, match officials etc for the rest of the season. The conversations continued over the following days with the enthusiastic and dedicated Management Team, and Ellie and I attended a training session at a local school. Before training began we had delivered a number of footballs generously donated to us before we came out to Zambia by Sunderland AFC. We could not have dreamt they would go to such a good home.

Friends and family have been very generous with their response to requests for donations and their generosity has within days ensured that the Club has the funds to continue next season.

With that funding secured, the next challenge is to find a way to provide much needed kit for the boys and girls. Football boots are a particular priority as many of the team play in bare feet, putting them at a distinct disadvantage on the wet pitches in the rainy season!

Once we have been able to kit out all the football and netball teams, we hope to facilitate the growth of the SASC over the coming years and build on the pride and focus it provides for a large number of enthusiastic and talented young people. The aspirations are outlined in the ‘Mission Statement’ and we are excited by the opportunities which lie ahead to develop the club and to nurture the sense of purpose, as well as the benefits of health and fitness, the pride in belonging to a team and the focus on education that it it provides for the boys and girls.

The Past (briefly!)

A charity called the stArt Foundation Trust (www.thestartfoundation.org) was set up by Claire Chan to help children with artistic talent in underprivileged areas of Zambia through workshops and teaching, funded through the sale of art works from her gallery 37D in Lusaka.

37D often exhibits Pam’s work and she wholeheartedly embraced the ethos of the Foundation and as a result of her energy and the support of Claire and all the Team at the Foundation, stArt has flourished in Mfuwe where workshops often have in excess of 100 children attending, the majority of whom are orphans or have only one living parent.

What grew out of the art workshops was a desire amongst the children to exercise their bodies as well as their artistic talents during break times.

So, Pam and the Foundation bought them a football to replace the one they had made themselves out of plastic bags and rubber bands…….

The children formed netball and football teams, organised an adult committee, found a coach, held training sessions and got donations to enter a local tournament. Unfortunately they were told they would not be allowed to enter the competition as they had no kit and no boots or shoes. Rather than accept this, these resourceful and determined children made themselves shirts from chitenge cloth, painted on the stArt Foundation logo, borrowed boots and shoes and entered the tournament. Whilst the boys were knocked out in the quarter finals of their football competition, in a plot twist worthy of Walt Disney, the girls won the netball tournament, a spectacular trophy and a cash prize of 20,000ZKw! In keeping with the ethos of the club, the winnings were distributed amongst the girls to help fund their education.

The success of both the boys and girls brought SASC to the attention of the Zambian Minister of Sport and he invited the club to register a team with the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) and compete in the local 4th Division.

In 2020 the boys won the local Independence Cup and the Christmas Cup and in December they were promoted into Division 3 (Eastern Region) as runners up in their league. Quite a meteoric rise!

As mentioned above, the football team are currently lying sixth in this Division with games in hand and with the boost that funding and hopefully new kit will provide they have a realistic chance of promotion again this season.

Meanwhile, the Netball season starts again in May and, having won both the Independence Cup and Christmas Cup competitions for the Mfuwe region last year, the girls are eager to build on these successes and match the achievements of the boys.

The Future

Having lived in Newcastle for over forty years, in the short time I have been here in Mfuwe, I have been struck by the number of similarities and parallels there are between the NE of Zambia and the NE of England.

Both are surrounded by amazing natural beauty and boast spectacular National Parks.Both are home to wonderful people; kind, generous, resourceful, ingenious with a great sense of humour and fierce pride in the place they call home. Both, sadly, share considerable financial hardship and social deprivation. Both share a love of art and creativity and have a passion for sport, football in particular! So, what will the future hold?

Ambitions for the stArt Art Sports Club are clear; hopefully to gain long term support from sporting institutions and North Eastern businesses to foster links between the two regions and to enable the talented young men and women of SASC to experience the benefits and enjoyment of being part of a club and playing team sports.

Other possibilities…….

Given the genesis of SASC in the stArt Foundation and its work in helping to foster artistic talent there seems to be real overlap with the work of the Baltic Gateshead and I hope we can build connections there.

The Mambwe District Hospital is currently under construction in Mfuwe being funded in part by UK Aid. Given that the North East of England is such a centre of medical excellence and also Ellie’s professional links in the region, there must surely be some help the North East can provide.

In education, I hope too there could be links forged between schools in both regions, with fundraising ideas already being put forward by one head teacher in the North east of England.

Do you think you could help? Would you like to join us for the journey?