Soccer 4 Hope Extends Hoops 4 Hope’s African Reach By Jack Graves (July 01, 2010)
For the past 16 years, Mark Crandall of Amagansett has been
developing young leaders in Zimbabwe and South Africa, using the pull of sport — basketball initially, and more recently, soccer, tennis, and chess — to impart the information and skills southern Africa’s young people need so that they can have reason to hope. Though Crandall’s Hoops 4 Hope and Soccer 4 Hope organizations have forged partnerships with the National Basketball Association, Grassroot Soccer (which has a presence in a dozen African countries), with 150 southern African schools, and with some corporations and universities, “We’re still operating on a shoestring,” he said during a recent conversation. Soccer 4 Hope was in the news when, in mid-March, Scott Russell, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation sportscaster, called attention to the work Crandall’s group was doing in Cape Town townships “on the forgotten fringe of wealth.” “It seems that the only news that comes out of Africa is bad news,” Crandall was quoted as having said. “Perhaps having the World Cup here means that the vast potential of
these people might finally be reflected.” Russell’s televised report drew much favorable comment. “Absolutely brilliant,” said one of the correspondents. “The world needs more programs like this and more people like Mark Crandall.” “At the moment,” Hoops and Soccer 4 Hope’s founder said the other day, “we’re running a five-week camp in two of the townships, in Khayelitsha and Guguleta. We’re there the year round, but, because of the World Cup the government has extended the three-week winter break to five weeks, and the township kids need something to do.” Soccer 4 Hope, geared to girls entirely, and toward “the empowerment of women,” extended the coed Hoops 4 Hope’s reach three years ago. Both programs use the same life skills curriculum whose goal is to develop young leaders. “Soccer is Africa’s most popular sport, but it’s political. Women haven’t been on the radar as far as soccer goes, so it’s provided a niche for us to introduce our life skills curriculum to young girls, who are at a high risk for getting H.I.V./AIDS — the incidence of rape and sexual violence there is among the highest in the world — and to talk with them about H.I.V. prevention and crime and drug prevention, and about our seven foundation-building ‘tools’ — focus, responsibility, self-esteem, self-awareness, sense of humor, integrity, and empathy, or ‘ubuntu.’ ” In Khayelitsha, Soccer 4 Hope’s seven-on-seven games are played on a small turf field, “an oasis” amid the dearth and dust of Cape Town’s biggest township, which has been managed for the past five years by Grassroot Soccer.
There are plans for 20 more such fields, said Crandall, who, in answer to a question, said that Soccer 4 Hope is in 37 schools in Cape Town, has 74 coaches, is mentoring 750 girls, and has through other events “reached 3,000 others.” Still, despite the good press, in Canada, Germany, France, and elsewhere, it had been Hoops 4 Hope’s most trying year ever, said Crandall, who plans to spend more time in the United States in the coming months in an effort to “achieve sustainability. . . . We’ve got a six-vehicle fleet, and all need work. The ‘93 GMC Shafer bus, in which we made that epic, several-thousand-mile road trip from Zimbabwe to Cape Town, is the best.” While the World Cup had provided “a great boost” (50 of the organization’s children have been going to World Cup games) and had been “good for the country,” there was, said Crandall, still a vast amount of work to do. “As I said, we’re operating on a shoestring. It would be nice to have a shoe . . . a pair of shoes.”