Ekurhuleni News visited Spirit community development at Kwa-Thema’s complex, the development prioritises a lot of sporting codes such as Netball, soccer, boxing and fitness training.The main objective of this project is to keep children away from the defiling activities in the streets and using drugs, they are not just nurturing children but they are also sending them to trials to showcase their talents.
The NPO project was established in 2020 by Madoda, Siya and Paxton, they named the project Spirit. The project was on hold because of the Covid-19, but now they feel like it’s the right time wherein they proceed go ahead with the project, the three gentlemen started by introducing soccer then they noticed that they also needed to include young girls who will participate in netball, however their obstacle was having a decent coach, likely they managed to recruit a lady who was a netball star Veli, that’s how the project began. Madoda said, “you know how painful it is too see kids messing around with their talents, there are a lot of children who are talented around Ekurhuleni, but they don’t have good opportunities to showcase their talents, so we trying by all means to collect them and give them an opportunity to prove themselves, we make sure that if we see a child who has potential, we organise trails for them in professional or development teams. Most of the youth are addicted to drugs and alcohol while they’re talented so we trying to channel them in right direction by endorsing them to spend time on the field.” The NPO believes that each and every child deserves an opportunity to participate in any sporting code so that they can find out which sport they are reasonably good in.
Spirit community development has under 11-19 soccer teams and under 13-15 Netball teams, the boxing sporting code will be revived soon, they are still in the process of making the field safe for children, so they are inviting kids to join their project and they are promising their parents that they will look after them and they will make sure that they are safe and developed under their hands. They’ve already taken two under 17 players to the MDC league for trials and that shows that they are good in their work and they are willing to send more players in future, there’s no joining fee in their teams if you like to send your child to the project just bring him/her along, from Monday to Friday around 4pm at complex and ask for Madoda or Veli, all community members are welcomed.
By Vusumuzi Makwakwa
