Finally, the ball rolls…
After about four weeks of intensive preparation, the NGUVU Street Football League finally celebrated its premiere at the Gachororo Primary School’s grounds in March 2015. There were eight Primary Schools in action from Gachororo:
- Gachororo Primary School
- St. Jude School
- Thiririka Primary School
- Joy Spring Academy
- St. Paul Primary School
- Jkuat Academy
- Mirimaini Primary School
- Faith Foundation
- Bridge Academy
75 teams comprising both girls and boys in the Under 10, Under 12, and U 14 age categories participated. This brought the total number of registered participants for the inaugural NGUVU Street Football League to over 700.
The action kicked off on 13th of March, and featured teams of Under 10 girls/boys. A total of 13 teams in the Under 10 Boys, and 11 teams in the Under 10 Girls met during the league.
The second day saw a total 16 matches played. Tensions and excitement were very high for each team and its supporters, as each team sought to score the highest in terms of goals and highly coveted fair play points.
Objective
A major point in the entire league was to instill positive values in the participants. As such, all players had been prepared to display their best in terms of personal conduct and sportsmanship, in order to rank favourably both in their individual capacities and as teams. Positive conduct was thus essential before matches, during the matches, and after the games. As the teachers and games masters from the participating teams consented, this was a great way of instilling positive values such as fair play, discipline, team work, respect and tolerance. Most importantly, the children were shown how to handle defeat without resulting to anger, blame and violence.
Achievement
With the launch of the NGUVU Street Football League, we achieved another important step in the "NGUVU Edu SPORT project" in creating a platform for the positive transformation of the thoughts and perceptions of competition and defeat, for the children of Juja. With these lessons and others to come, our children will learn to positively accept the outcomes of life’s processes and challenges, and to work ethically towards the attainment of their ambitions.