Assistant Teacher and Coach

The location & background

In the far northeast of South Africa, on the border of the Kruger National Park, lies the first (or last) village in South Africa, Bennde-Mutale. This forgotten corner of South Africa is known for still being a ‘true’ Africa; people living off the land, foraging, living in rondavels, making their own fired bricks or plain mud bricks and with the occasional wild animal from the park breaking through the fence; elephant and lion being the most common. 

Areas which border national parks are often in very remote areas and unfortunately typified by poor education, poor access to health, very high unemployment, high HIV and TB levels, high levels of teenage pregnancy and with little hope for skills development.  This leads to a multitude of cyclical problems with each generation, which can be very hard to alleviate never mind reverse.  

More often than not these communities are at the end of the line for everything, and that includes primary schools where some teachers have to travel for 4 to 5 hours just to reach school.  Schools often do not have a teacher for every class, many classes are currently joined together, or a class can go with no teachers for a whole year.  Or teachers have 2 or 3 roles to play at the school on top of being a teacher.  

Ultimately, it is the children who suffer, who do not get the education they deserve, who end up pregnant at 15 years old, or with no transferable skills forever destined to be a ‘casual labour’ for the rest of their lives.

The project

Bennde-Mutale is now the hub for a new sports project, called ‘World Parks, World Cup’ a programme for the schools/communities which border national parks.  This includes communities not only in South Africa but in Zimbabwe who border Gonarezhou National Park and communities in Mozambique who are in the buffer zone of the Limpopo National Park.  This area is collectively known as the ‘Pafuri Node’ of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park and where volunteers will be based.

WPWC vision is about  ‘Creating lasting development among communities in the Pafuri Node of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park through sport.’  We are achieving this through the establishment of:

• football based educational programmes  in schools and after-school 
• creation of girls football teams at primary schools
• regional girls football league
• annual events
• cross-border exchanges

This being Africa, and South Africa at that, the best-laid plans are always open to changes on the ground. 

Volunteers can expect an early start as schools start around 8 am,  where volunteers will stay for up to 4 hours assisting a local teacher in the classroom and occasionally in the school office.  This will be followed up with up to 2 hours of football for social impact teaching or general football practice sometimes during the school hours and sometimes afterschool hours.

A local teachers day lasts from 0730 to 1430, so volunteers can expect to fit into this time frame, with 2 days a week with afternoon sessions from 1630 to 1830,  volunteers aren't expected to wait at the school for their lessons to start, if lessons don't start until 10 am then volunteers can come in at 0930.  

Lunch can be had at school with the local teachers if the volunteers want to or they can bring lunch with them,  if a volunteers host family is close to the school, which we try to organise, then they are welcome to go home for lunch.

For our football project, we follow a programme designed by Coaches Across Continents, a global leader in sport for social impact, where local coaches are still learning to develop their own games which tackle local social issues and challenge the children to seek ways to solve them.  Volunteers will have access to training games developed by CAC and our local coaches, as well as access to Sport Session Planner, an online games planner which has a large library of planned games to implement.

As part of the programme, volunteers can expect a braai (bbq) on Friday afternoons/evening as well as a day trip or overnight weekend excursions at least every other week, these include trips to the Kruger National Park, local waterfalls, Africa's biggest Baobab and local provincial Big 5 game reserves for fishing, camping and walking.