Capital coach kicks off effort to help African street children

Published on Monday 9 November 2009 08:55

A SPARTANS FC coach is helping to change the lives of street children and school pupils in South Africa.

Terry Burns travelled to a deprived area of Durban recently to do some coaching and donate 4,000 worth of vital equipment to Amouti School.

This will help provide computers and a much-needed soup kitchen for the school.

He has also been helping them learn about the beautiful game.

Mr Burns and Spartans FC are working alongside Forrester High School, which has received a 2,000 grant from the British Education Council to kick-start an exchange programme that will see African teachers visit the Edinburgh school and vice versa.

A computer room was constructed by Mr Burns and members of the charity Promise, and Forrester has now provided ten computers.

Teachers from Amouti are due to visit the Edinburgh school in March, after staff and pupils have settled into their new campus.

Mr Burns, 46, and three Forrester teachers visited the country two weeks ago. He refereed a match between two homeless teams and donated balls, bibs and cones to the school.

He said: "We all felt very strongly for the cause and wanted to give something to such a poor area. Football gives the students and the street kids something to do, although we found that we couldn't do very rigorous exercise with the street kids because they had been sleeping rough.

"There are 850 pupils in the school and there were literally no facilities to provide food, and poor toilet facilities."

Frances Benton, team leader of Promise, added: "Parents have to pay the equivalent of 30 – a year's wage to them – for their child's schooling, so we decided to provide the soup kitchen and food. The parents then come in to cook it. Now 132 pupils get a good, square meal a day. It is a system that works and we want to develop it. We are raising money through events such as an African ceilidh."

The football club began helping deprived schools and sports teams two years ago in partnership with James Gillespie's High School, when Mr Burns and Spartans received an interesting welcome organised by the government.

He said: "When we arrived they thought our team was as big as Manchester United. They had a police motorcade and bouncers took us straight to a press conference to talk about football. It was great feeling like Jose Mourinho for the day."

The next step is to continue helping those in need, but Spartans will also begin training high-profile South African teams in their first division.

Mr Burns said: "We are working with the chairman of a team called the Nhati Lions. As well as doing the charity work we hope we can learn some tips from them, and that they can learn from us."

Derek Curran, headteacher of Forrester High, said the school had enjoyed offering advice to teachers in Africa. He said: "It's mind-blowing to be working with Amouti because although they are poor in facilities they are rich in terms of motivation and aspiration. In turn we can help with their leadership skills and networking.

"There are no phones, so we'd like to make contact easier for them. We've started by offering the computers and broadband."