We just came back from our second interschool football match. This time, it was an 8-3 loss, but better than the 5-1 defeat we received the last time. Our Operation Mercy Eagles could have scored four more goals easily, the coach said, and the players are growing in confidence. They come from the poorest part of the city where many don’t have contacts or cash for equipment or fees to allow them to play with the formal clubs in the north of the city. This neighbourhood is marked by high levels of unemployment and social problems.
Operation Mercy´s football project works in partnership with a local school with a wider opportunity to play matches with surround schools in the neighbourhood. The boys are aged 12 to 13 and have never had any previous opportunity to play soccer with a trainer. The school helped identify the 20 boys by their grades, believing that the low grades were only an indication of the difficult circumstance of the parents – not an indication of their intelligence. Operation Mercy is wanting to locate those who are also left out because they are perhaps carrying too much weight or are keen but not considered sporty enough or have just not had any opportunity. Operation Mercy aims to instil confidence, to recognise the God-given value of some that no-one else recognises, and to invest in those who could not get any coaching, as well as to instil respect for each other. There are no losers on this team. Our boys are the underdogs, but they are going to be winners. Some are coming into their third year now and are ranked amongst the Eagles veterans.
Mirusha lives locally and works with Operation Mercy as part of the coaching staff. She is a kind of “Football Aunty” to the boys. “Football was not my sport, but everyone wants to play now. I want to get these kids away from the bad roads, from knives, drugs and later unemployment,” she explains. “I am here so that our youth will not be lost. Some kids here do not have their fathers at home. Mothers are glad that they know where their sons are after school. Coming to us, I already see the difference on their faces and their language improves. They stop putting the others down, they can say sorry and show respect.
“When we have the breaks in the training programme, some of the boys catch me and want to talk about how things are going at home. This opportunity means a lot to know you are involved in lives. The kids have a place to talk about what is going on in their lives.”
Mirusha also has a dream for Operation Mercy to take another step to offer some vocational skill to the teenagers. Operation Mercy already offers sewing training to girls and Mirusha would love to see that extended to offering barber training for the boys.
Football training, which is part of the youth dimension of the STEP project, aims at three- to five-year-ahead outcomes, where young people will gain confidence to have mindset to later undertake vocational training or studies, and to avoid unemployment. The outcome is to see growing numbers of young people aged 15-24 in training, education or employment, following their STEP participation.
