YDF in Swaziland: Contributing to the country's future through football
The Kingdom of Swaziland is a small country land-locked by South
Africa and Mozambique. It gained independence in 1968 and is today ruled
by King Mswati III. Swaziland is a member of the Southern African
Development Community, the African Union, and the Commonwealth of
Nations. Its economy is dominated by the service industry, manufacturing
and agriculture; however, Swaziland's economic growth and social
integrity are under serious threat from the world's highest
HIV-infection rate. According to estimates, more than 26 per cent of the
country's 1.3 million citizens carry the virus, a situation that poses a
danger to the country's existence if uncontained. Today, approximately
190,000 people in Swaziland are HIV-positive, including 15,000 children
under the age of 15. According to the 2009 Epidemic Update of the Joint
United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the average Swazi citizen's life
expectancy fell by half to 32 years between 1990 and 2007, in large part
due to the epidemic.
Combating the drivers of HIV-infections in youths
Among other things, the relatively early start of sexual activity
among the youth, the low social status of girls and women, and
associated high levels of gender-based violence are discussed as
underlying causes. Young people have also named the lack of
youth-friendly services that provide access to health services, the lack
of recreational facilities and poor job prospects as contributing
factors. In search of solutions, sport is increasingly being viewed as a
suitable tool for behavioural change and for disseminating crucial
information on a sustainable basis. It was against this backdrop that
the Youth Development through Football (YDF) project decided to include
Swaziland in its 'Strong youth, strong Africa!' 2010 World Cup
programme, and embarked on a successful partnership with the Swaziland
National Sports Council (SNSC). In this way, Swaziland became YDF's
tenth partner country on the African continent.
From soccer to transformation
The Swaziland Social Transformation Network (SSTN) submitted an
application to the Swaziland Government to have the
youth-development-through-football approach implemented in cooperation
with the National Football Association Swaziland (NFAS). The
transformation network aims to contribute to the economic and
social-transformation discourse of governmental and non-governmental
institutions by facilitating and increasing effective participation and
engagement in development policies that impact on human potential. The
network focuses on applied research, knowledge and skills development
and is working in the area of public-health and health-systems reform,
governance, gender, socioeconomic rights and social development in
Swaziland. The football association is established throughout the
country, with a total of 721 teams across the four regions. The coaches
are driven by the game and in the past, concentrated primarily on
technical-skills coaching, having had limited capacity for strengthening
life-skills education among their soccer players.
The coach as mentor and counsellor
The partnership project will not only strengthen their coaching
ability further, but also introduce them to coaching-for-life
approaches. In addition, it seeks to increase the participation of young
people in the discourse on HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and male
circumcision through educational approaches which use sport as a means
of behavioural changes. Furthermore, the project aims to create a pool
of coaches who are both trained in life-skills education and
knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS in order to integrate these skills further
into the sports sector. Simultaneously promoting the opportunity for
young girls and boys to participate in sports activities and creating
women's teams in the communities, the project also strives to provide a
forum for young people to engage in conversations on HIV/AIDS, gender
and male circumcision, and to strengthen the capacity of coaches as
mentors and counsellors to their teams. Strengthening youth-leadership
skills and motivating policy-makers to lead the fight against HIV/AIDS
in their communities is another aspect of the project.
Two
coaches from the National Football Association have already been trained
as instructors on the YDF Toolkit, with further coach-training sessions
set to take place throughout the year. After the initial training, the
instructors will review the YDF training manual and incorporate specific
modules hand in hand with the development of the project in the
country.