Five weeks and counting

With just five weeks to go in Sierra Leone, we are really focusing hard on getting through the workload that we outlined in January to ensure that we leave at least a modest legacy here.  While we are all looking forward to seeing loved ones, eating some of our favourite foods (I’m badly missing sushi and Indian, and we all may have a big mac eating contest when we hit Heathrow) and doing the things we enjoy at home, we all seem to share a collective feeling of pre-emptive regret about our impending departure.  I don’t think any of us can or want to stay longer, but we’ve had such an enriching and stimulating experience that life at home threatens to be tedious and monotonous compared to our adventure in West Africa. 

Week seven here was action packed yet again.  On Friday, we headed north towards Sierra Leone’s border with Guinea to Outamba-Kilimi national park.  The park was a popular tourist destination in the past but was attacked and burned to the ground by the RUF in the mid-90s and still hasn’t fully recovered.  Things are slowly improving but it still lacks basic facilities.  And getting there is some challenge.  On the way up we spent 6 hours in a Toyota Hiace with 28 people crammed in, took a 2 hour motorcycle ride that got a puncture and, on the way back, in addition to everything, we had to stay three-in-a-bed in a guesthouse before a 4am rise.  However, the park was great.  We stayed in wooden huts, played poker under the moonlight and brought our own food (spaghetti and beans!) to be cooked by the park staff.  After a beautiful canoe-ride, we saw Africa’s most dangerous animal (the hippopotamus) up close; while chilling out up a tree, a troupe of rare monkeys passed overhead on their way for lunch; and from the same vantage point in the tree I could see fish hunting for and eating flies and each other.  Don’t be fooled into thinking that West Africa is all desert and rock, it is in fact rich in vegetation and overflowing in animal life. 

Most of the rest of the week was spent in the office making progress on our projects, but we also got to see some football, took part in a photo-shoot for the Sierra Leone marathon, I delivered a class on project management to the CBF managers and coaches, and I started giving Alusine some MS Office tutorials.  A few of you have asked what we’re actually working on and this is probably a good time to discuss what we’re trying to achieve here.  The footballistas amongst you may be disappointed that our work is a bit business consultancy but that’s our role, and our challenge was to look at how we could improve on all aspects of the league.  We’re working on dozens of initiatives, but below is a synopsis of the most important ones, with some comment on their impact and challenges.

1. Improve the sustainability and impact of community projects

In order to participate in the football league, the circa 2,000 boys and girls of the league must complete one community project a month.  This is a great initiative as it builds awareness in the children of the community around them, it underscores the importance of doing good deeds without expecting anything in return for them and it helps keep them away from gangs and drugs.  However, what we noticed is while all of the projects were very well meaning and some of them were quite impactful, there was a lack of sustainability – they were mostly one off benefits that didn’t change behaviour.  What we’re attempting to do here is to increase the ambition, value-add and sustainability of the community projects by partnering with NGOs, the town council and other organisations that are willing to engage and empower youth.  Joe is currently running a really good pilot whereby the Bellamy boys and girls are supporting the National Election Commission in getting voters biometrically registered for the election later this year.  The children hand out flyers, knock on doors and explain the process, deadlines and requirements to potential voters, many of whom can’t read or write.  There are many other similar projects in the pipeline that will similarly promote collaboration with like-minded partner organisations, delivering sustainable and impactful projects and empower the kids.

2.  Investing in staff

While CBF runs training courses for its staff that are more than sufficient for their day-to-day needs, we’re launching a curriculum to build their capacity and invest in their future.  There are so many advantages to this.  The CBF managers are very well educated by local standards and any investment in their education and development is an investment in the future of Sierra Leone.  Like all good corporate training it improves employee engagement and makes staff feel more valued.  We also believe it will improve the functioning of the league and will mark the Craig Bellamy Foundation out as one of the best employers in Sierra Leone.  I am currently delivering a 4 week module on project management, teaching staff on how to initiate, execute, control and close a project and teaching them about scope, Gantt charts, work break down structures and RAID logs.  Very exciting stuff!  Other modules in the pipeline include business strategy, stakeholder management, communications, culture and economics.  Rather than just deliver what we can while we’re here, we’ve structured the curriculum over a two-year period, with strict requirements to achieve a certificate. 

3. Passport to Empowerment

Along with community projects, the kids are also required to do peer education classes.  Similar to the community projects, these have excellent objectives but we have found execution to be inconsistent, with each manager required to come up with their own education programme each month.  Our idea was to put together a formal curriculum so that after spending four years in the CBF league (age 11 to 14) the children would go through a standard programme of life skills that would stand to them into adulthood.  While I have a curriculum outlined, I am going to meet with some of the children next week to better understand their level of comprehension and understanding – I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with an 11 year old and remarkably all of these kids speak three languages (Tenme, Krio and English) so I need to understand their capacity for leading these sessions themselves.  But the courses should be interesting and include topics such as African human rights heroes, best health practices, children’s rights, careers and contraception.  This initiative, which would be rolled out to all 2,000 Bellamy kids a year would clearly be our biggest win while here and would create a real legacy that would make a material difference to the kids in future years.

4. Attendance records

Another requirement of the league is that the kids have very good school attendance records and one of the key roles of team managers is to meet with “linked” teachers in order to get attendance records and to assess class contribution.  However, on average this involves the managers having relationships with 11 schools with huge overlaps between managers which the school teachers find frustrating.  It is time consuming, expensive and not always productive, even though it is central to the league’s values.  This aim of this initiative is to reduce the number of interactions and miles covered by moving from a one-to-many relationship to a one-to-one relationship where the managers will take sole responsibility for all the children in a school close to where they live / work, regardless of what team they play for.  The challenge here?  Trust!  Some of the managers believe that their children’s attendance may be underrepresented by opposing managers looking to gain an advantage – if children don’t go to school, they can’t play in the league!  So we’re working on a system that ensures there is secondary validation of attendance.  And on building trust.

5.  Girl’s league launch

The final major initiative on our radar is the launch of the girl’s league.  Promoting gender equality is one of the top objectives of the CBF league and on the 8^th of Match, International Women’s Day, we will launch our girl’s league.  Will has put a lot of work into this.  In the week leading up to the launch, each of the teams (boys and girls) will get delivered a module from an NGO on topics such as domestic violence, teenage pregnancy and gender equality.  Then on the launch day, we’re gathering all of our players outside the council offices (old HQ for the RUF militants funded by Charles Taylor) and marching to Wusum Field.  The girls will lead off and the boys will be in support, banging drums and waving flags.  When we get to the field everyone will gather for speeches from local prominent women, speaking on a range of gender equality issues.  After some refreshments we’ll then have an exhibition game between two of the teams on what is, by all accounts, the best football pitch in the country.  Local and national journalists will be in attendance, there is plenty of radio coverage planned in the run-up, we are expecting local dignitaries (including the elusive mayor) and we are they 1^st (and we think only) West African event formally recognised by International Women’s day.  There will be a big celebration after.

There are a raft of other initiatives we’re working on, some of which are challenging (how do you create a graduate league with no financing?), some tedious (how do you standardise and improve homework clubs?) and some entirely mundane (how do you build a database repository to reduce the volume of paper and improve accuracy in reporting?).  The latter is one of my babies!  I know some of you have probably been thinking that we spend all day on a football pitch, training kids, posing and working on our suntans – while we’ve done that on occasion the reality is that we spend most of our days in an office, exchanging ideas, writing proposals, doing analysis and engaging with the managers to better understand their challenges.  Office work is Monday – Friday, we try to go to games and community projects on Saturdays and we give training sessions on a Sunday – it can be a 7 day a week job at times.  But on reflection, this is a near-perfect volunteering position for me.  It has balanced stimulating work, a great cause, a country very much in need, amazingly positive people and a fantastic, life changing adventure.  Football is what attracted me to this role, but it’s been a relatively insignificant factor in my fascination and infatuation with Sierra Leone and West Africa.