Balls To Poverty fund-raising events include:

“It Started In Soweto” 1,200 mile WATT bike cycle challenge (students cycle in teams to cover the distance between the townships we have visited over the years since Joe’s visit in 2004 to Soweto).

Balls To Poverty Day – June 29th 2012

Students and staff to run coaching sessions in 28 Primary schools simultaneously between hours of 10am and 3pm. This event will be open to school children at all schools and will double up as a 'Coaching Marathon' for our own students. Each school will be 'twinned' with one of the South African townships that we have visited between 2005 and 2011.

Plans and Dreams - What's coming Next...

More Students... more children... more coaches... more leaders... more countries... more pathways...

More students - Balls To Poverty Uganda launches in April 2012, in partnership with The Kids League Kampala. Whilst April 2012 sees the 8th consecutive Programme in South Africa, this is the first programme launched in another country.

After the successful launch in September 2010 of the first ever Balls To Poverty academic qualification around Sport Development (City and Guilds PISA Level 2), We will launch the level 3 qualification in September 2012 for 16 new learners.

More children - The plan over the next 5 years and beyond is to continue our community development work and coaching work in townships across South Africa and in 'slum' communities of Uganda. We aim to coach more children in South African townships and to continue to distribute footballs and rugby balls, engaging more young people who may at risk of crime and drug use, through smaller, more local sports projects that we partner where our balls are used by PE teachers and township project leaders. We aim to have reached around One Million young South Africans and Ugandans who will have had access to games of football and rugby through The Balls To Poverty Programme by the end of 2015 and our Post-World Cup Phase. This will have involved working in over 35 different townships across the country from Soweto, Johannesburg in 2004 to Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, East London, Mbashe, The Garden Route and Cape Town. It will also involve work in the 'slum' communities of Kampala, Uganda.

More Coaches - Balls To Poverty has already delivered 'Coach the Coaches' Programmes to around 600 South African and Ugandan coaches (April 2012) as part of the aim to create a more long-lasting legacy and support. We aim to deliver football and rugby coach education workshops to an additional 500 South African and Ugandan Coaches over the next 5 years.

We feel it is important to exchange and share information on teaching and coaching with the role models and community leaders from the township areas in particular, in addition to the footballs and rugby balls that we provide. The intention is that the impact of this combination will have a greater positive influence over young people in those areas.

More leaders - We aim to continue and build on our extensive Schools Community Programme that we run in disadvantaged areas of Nottingham. Teaching weekly themes such as: Community, Inspiration, Aspiration, Empowerment, Self-belief and Taking action, we aim to build on the 16,000 young school children that we have worked with so far and aim to reach the 30,000 mark within the next 3 years.

More countries - We aim to extend The Balls To Poverty Programme to other countries over the next 3 years, with opportunities for expansion in Brazil, India and China. We also look to embark in the next 18 months on partnerships with Danish organisations and partners from Qatar to engage young people from those countries in the work of The Balls To Poverty Programme.

More pathways - We aim to establish more pathways with partner organisations to create opportunities (employment, volunteering, training etc..) for our most deserving and outstanding role models to come through the Balls To Poverty Programme. There is potential for 3 – 6 month placements to be available in 2012/13 for around 10 outstanding leaders to go and work on Community sport projects in the following countries; Burkino Faso, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. In addition, we have created several coaching roles for students at sport clubs in Nottingham and we are working on a European Partner Project to send 30 of the most outstanding leaders for The Balls To Poverty Programme to work with Danish young leaders in schools across 5 main cities in Denmark. The aim is to launch this collaboration, that would see 5 Danish leaders join the tours to South Africa, in July 2013.