Around The Ball Project - Juba
- At risk youth
- Boys' development
- Health education
- HIV/AIDS
- Child protection
- Recreation
- Youth leadership
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Steven
Kasamba
Southern Sudan Youth Sports Association
, BJA
Southern Sudan Youth Sports Association
+249 955 017 522
Private Bag, Kator, Juba
, BJA
, BJA
Yes
ATB-Juba shall organize STREET SOCCER matches and events throughout Juba with the intention of;
i) building trusting relationships with the concerned stakeholders by creating contacts with all the children in street situation in Juba, identifying different groups of street children and their internal structures, and creating contacts with traders, police officers, & the community
ii) becoming familiar with the world of the children by mapping all the sensitive locations (sleeping, eating, working and substance consumption places)
iii) Providing responses to their needs and problems, both immediate actions and long-term processes, by assessing children needs/problems and case planning for rehabilitation & reintegration activities, informing & orienting the children on services available, promoting awareness on risk behaviors like drug abuse, early sex etc..., and providing medical care.
Thus, ATB-JUBA will use FOOTBALL on the STREETS of Juba to mobilize, create awareness, marshal and provide solutions to the street children’s predicaments.
ATB-Juba aims to:
i) Rehabilitate and reintegrate 1,000 street kids into family, schools and labor market by early 2014
ii) Expose and encourage over 3,000 youth to participate in football annually. The best players can eventually be absorbed into established football clubs
iii) Produce over 1,000 peace ambassadors for the South Sudan by 2014
iv) Improve the general health of children living in the street of Juba by provide feeding, medical care, counseling (drugs abuse, sexuality, VCT, etc), and day care services to about 50 street children daily
v) Ignite the general public's awareness of the problems faced by street children and petition for their involvement in the rehabilitation efforts. Once the community becomes sensitive about the needs of these children, it provides them with greater access to available services and opportunities.
1 = BUILD GOOD RELATIONSHIPS:
Year 1, 2011 will witness creation of trusting relationships;
a) WITH Street Living Children; so as to:
i) create contacts with them by going daily to the streets/markets of Juba in order to socialize and initiate dialogue with them hoping to make them aware of other possibilities and convince them to change their lives. Building trust is essential since some children have had traumatizing experiences with adults. Family life, centre-based activities and residential accommodation shall be modeled AROUND FOOTBALL & counseling in the STREETS so as to encourage the children to gradually embrace them, and ii) identify different groups of S.L.C and their internal structures.
b) WITH all relevant adults who surround Street Living Children, so as to create contacts. This would include traders, police officers, teachers, parents/guardians, and the community + its leaders. This is to build basis for community awareness and involvement in the rehabilitation efforts. Consequently, stigma, discrimination and human rights abuses faced by such Street Living Children will lessen.
2 = FAMILIARIZE WITH THE STREET LIVING CHILDREN WORLD/ENVIRONMENT
In the 2nd half of Year 1, 2011 ATB-Juba would get actual acquaintance with the environment of the Juba street child by;
a) mapping of all their sensitive locations i.e. their sleeping places, sources of food, work places and areas of substance consumption
b) assessing their needs/problems and case planning for rehabilitation or reintegration activities,
3 = PROVIDE RESPONSES TO THEIR NEEDS & PROBLEMS
Universally, Street Children problems are spontaneous and cumulative, thus requiring both immediate actions and long-term process responses. E.g. a child knocked down by a vehicle shall immediately be rushed to hospital, while the one willing to go back to school shall require a process of planning.
However, both alternatives shall be used to:
i) inform the children on services available and orient them,
ii) promote awareness on risks behaviors by way of counseling/guidance (drug abuse, early sex, etc....)
iii) provide VCT, medical care, food, and accommodation
iv)seek rehabilitation & reintegration services
ATB-Juba shall realize these responses around;
a) Football matches/games organized in the street,
b) A day drop-in centre
c) Strengthened networks and partnerships
1) Any outbreak of armed conflict prior or during the implementation period would imply cessation of civil activities. Consequently, a large proportion of our target group might be recruited into the armed conflict as child soldiers. No one can guess the duration and outcome of any such conflict.
2) Our operations are largely linked with local organizations and institutions. Our partners are also big boosters to our capacity and capabilities. Therefore if any of our partner NGOs and/or government departments opted to renege on the mutual agreements between us, that would greatly hinder our ability and qualification to optimally accomplish certain activities
3) Although most personnel involvement in this rehabilitation practice shall be voluntary and some services shall be sort free of charge, funds shall still be needed to entice these children with food/first aid, hire VCT facilities, purchase sporting equipment, improve playing space surfaces, construct a day-in centre, pay for movement/communication/refreshment and eventually construct a children-cum-vocational training centre. Currently, funds are availed from personal donations and this is not sustainable. If the project won't attract significant funds, the peoples' resolve might be weakened. Our future programs will mainly depend on volunteerism and funds.
4) An unpredictable trend on availability of playing spaces because of competition for open spaces from commercial and residential minded parties. This is particularly so because most of our target spaces are spontaneous open spaces and under-utilized paths/roads throughout Juba around which street children rest and which are very ideal for Street Football. However, most unused spaces in Juba are un-gazetted and due to increased interest for commercial and residential purposes, powerful characters in the society might eventually grab them.
1001‐10,000
Less than $50
Yes
Idea phase
, BJA
Yes
Southern Sudan Youth Sports Association
1‐5 years
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
i) Partner NGOs provide us with supplementary technical skills and capacities e.g. our current day drop-in centre and office facility belongs to War Child Holland; EMDH provides us with some capacity building services and technical assistance free of charge, Living Waters supplements us with accommodation for the S.L.C, while organized football teams absorb S.L.C players.
ii) Government departments are more likely to provide us easy access government services like legal documents, etc. Likewise Government-run schools, vocational training institutes and hospitals shall be followed upon to admit some S.L.S free of charge.
iii) Local businesses have first hand data about S.L.C who tend to mostly assemble around trading areas for food leftovers, tips and manual jobs. Such data is important for our analysis.
iv) Local businesses are also potential employers of our reformed youth
1. ORGANIZE FOOTBALL IN THE STREETS
- Identify the spontaneous open spaces and under-used roads/paths, areas where street kids leave, eat, play and relax,
- Prepare small football pitches on such spaces,
- Organize these children into teams named after their areas and categorized by gender and age,
- Arrange and schedule matches/games,
- Build capacity of the trainers, referees and group leaders
- Eventually construct street football pitches
N/B: Street Football is football played on a much smaller field (about 15m by 25m) with less players (4s or 5s) and fewer rules.
Around the street football pitch, ATB-Juba shall be able to build relationships with the children and with the community and assess the problems/needs of the children. Children shall be oriented on the available services and opportunities. VCT and medical care shall be availed.
2. ESTABLISHING A DROP-IN CENTRE
- Establish or otherwise construct a day drop-in centre
- Build our internal administration capacities
- Build our staff capacities to handle children
- Recruit street children into the centre
N/B: The centre shall be the administration unit and response base from where we shall offer day time feeding, clean drinking water, medical care, pre-education, VCT and case plan for rehabilitation/reintegration activities.
3. STRENGTHENING OUR NETWORKS
- Rejuvenate, reaffirm, renegotiate or reinstate our present agreements
- Identify, negotiate and establish new pro-street children partners
N/B: Our partners shall be organizations, institutions and individuals ready to provide free services or at very subsidized rates. Like:
i) Local NGOs will supplement accommodation, counseling & medical care,
ii) government departments, hospitals and schools will provide health, education and legal documents services
iii) Technical institutions will provide vocational & life skills trainings
iv) traders and football clubs will absorb the youth into the labor market and income generation
Children in street situations in Juba are very visible. They are found in virtually each corner in Juba scavenging for left-over foods, consuming substances, violently settling their disputes and doing low paying jobs.
Southern Sudan Youth Sports Association (SSYSA), Living Water, Children of the World (EMDH, an international NGO), and Federal Ministry for Home Affairs partnered late 2009 to conduct an assessment of Children in Streets Situations (CSS) in Juba. The exercise aimed to understand well the phenomenon of CSS in Juba and establish a common strategy between these concerned actors. We found out that the CSS world in Juba was horrifying, multiplying and neglected.
On conclusion, individual organizations were challenged to initiate suggestions and actions that would arrest this situation. SSYSA formed what it called the "Mobile Team" with a view of getting concrete information about this phenomenon. The Mobile Team went further into the field, held retreats and exchanged notes. Eventually, the Mobile Team identified that there are two major characteristics:
1. Children already in the streets, and
2. Children with a growing potential of coming to the streets.
These challenges required two distinct yet related responses classified into:
(i) Protective strategies in response to those already in the streets and;
(ii) Preventive interventions to help minimize the number of new entrants into the streets.
Further breakdown of these responses revealed the simplicity of addressing the CSS problem, only that the major challenge remained in mobilizing and igniting the involvement of the target children and the larger community.
Having worked with football initiates and Street Soccer in Kenya for over 10 years, I recognized the power football had in pulling people to focus on an area and/or an issue. When STREET FOOTBALL came to mind, I immediately suggested that we take FOOTBALL where these children are found, in the spontaneous open spaces and under-utilized roads/pathways throughout Juba.. We should make the games as exciting and as competitive as could possibly be, and invite the public to participate in such games in form of audience, officiating, teams’ leadership and event organization. Then while everyone concentrated on the excitement of the games, our Mobile Team will gather all the relevant information and analyze case by case. Our Mobile Team will then easily identify cases for medical attention, feeding, rehabilitation, reintegration, etc and solicit for response and support from our partners, the public, the government, and other organized groups.
This idea is largely a concerted effort of the Mobile Team group. Formed in January 2010, the Mobile Team is a pro-active initiative within Southern Sudan Youth Sports Association. SSYSA was founded in 1997 as a congregate of sports initiatives mainly football, objectively to address social issues & problems in South Sudan. It has over 50 youth teams, over 1,000 players and volunteers participating in its football leagues and attends to over 80 children on a daily basis at the War Child - Holland centre in Kator, Juba. Its social workers are James Wani, Josphine Ifone, Hanis Angelo Ebogbo, Moses Lomoro, Geoffrey Kasudi, Abudio Moodi Wani and Steven Kasamba.
The Mobile Team is largely partnering with EMDH and Living Waters in responding to the Children in streets situation. The main mandate of the Mobile Team is to meet and build relationships with CSS, Community leaders, police officers, traders, teachers, parents and guardians and to collect data for further management. The team is also supposed to draw responses to the needs and problems of the CSS, and drum up support in solving such problems.
Through another organization or company
Streetfootballworld