Namibia kicks off 1GOAL

VSO volunteer Kevin Crowe reports on the Namibia Football Association's Galz & Goals mini world cup tournament and 1GOAL

The first tournament of the Galz & Goals series took place on Saturday, 12 June 2010 at the Eldorado Secondary School in Windhoek.

The event saw two girls' teams of under 13s and under 15s registering to kick off the coming season by taking part in their very own mini world Cup, where school and community teams played as world cup nations.

The under 13s tournament was won by Eros Primary School (playing as Nigeria) and the under 15s was won by JS Acadamy (playing as Holland).

SCORE (Sports Coaches OutReach) and VSO volunteers collected 250 signatures for the 1GOAL Education for all campaign. The teams also took part in some of our "Kicking AIDS Out" activities during a break in play.

The Rundu event took place on Friday, 11 June 2010 and collected 210 signatures. (This tournament was also won by Nigeria.) Other mini World Cups tournaments will follow in Okahandja, Gobabis, Khorixas and Keetmanshoop in the coming weeks. 

The events have been a great success so far, with reports appearing in the hugely popular free paper Informante, the daily Republikein and the state-run New Era.

In addition, I was interviewed on NBC about the 1GOAL campaign and VSO’s work, in a segment that aired directly before the opening match of the World Cup on Friday 11 June.

The Galz & Goals project aims to empower adolescent local girls by providing them with information on how to make healthy choices about their lifestyle, and alongside the opportunity to play football. More than 8 million people have already signed, but the aim is to get 72 million signatures – one for each child who is denied a primary education.

To view more pictures of the 1GOAL event, visit our Flickr account.