Green Sports Africa partners Mastercard Foundation Organizes Historic seminar for Ghanaian Grassroot Coaches

Green Sports Africa partnered Mastercard Foundation organised a one-day workshop for 20 Ghanaian grassroot coaches in Accra to assist them in imbibing sporting values and campaign dubbed “Take The Shot” using sports as a tool for social change.

The historic workshop was delivered by dynamic sport duo George Ouma and Kassim Ismaily for a total of 20 grassroot football handlers.

The focus was on post COVID-19 challenges as well as the highlights the important of getting vaccinated.

The workshop provided coaches a handbook on grassroots football. Discussion were held to identify their problems during the Covid-19 period and holistic development as well as recognize how the coaches themselves display these values.

Questions session were also held where all the 20 grassroots coaches came to talk about how the Covid-19 affected them and Ouma and Ismaily provided answers to their questions.

Ouma, co-founder of Green Sports Africa advised the grassroots coaches who haven’t taken the Covid-19 jap should do well and take them as well as the the entire team, because Covid-19 is here to stay with us.

On sponsorship, Ouma said;

“Sponsors, organization and NGOs look for positive brands to associate with. In some countries in Africa, the government make it mandatory for some organization to give back but most of the countries that is not the case.

“So how do we compete with this bigger clubs, Asante Kotoko and the likes. The way to compete, we have to ask ourselves as coaches, as grassroots teams, what value to you add to that specific organization.

“This is important because in Africa unfortunately we been having these narratives of we must seek for help. It’s time for us to say, I can help you too, but if I help you too, this is what I required from you, that is how we negotiate.

“That is how you add value to this sponsors. And when you do that, then it might be more difficult for them to terminate or not to extend their contract when it expired. Because there’s a value that you are adding.

“He said the coaches are the brand of the grassroots teams, i.e how they appear, the way they speak and how they do their things will make the organization or co-operative to listen to them.

 

Ismaily who is the Director of Green Sports Africa added that;

“It very difficult when you are a coach at the grassroots level, the players always want to be trained, sometimes the pitch for them to train, equipment is expensive. Sometimes the support required to running our programs properly is not just there.

“So the button line about what George is saying is, we have to be creative and then we succeed on one thing, we have to build on top of that thing and that’s what we get it wrong in football.

“In my county Kenya, for us an academic, before we started the academy we used to host tournament. Our first tournament was in 2012, that’s 10 years ago. We had four teams who participated. The next tournament we had six teams and after one year, we had 20 teams that’s in 2013 and 2014 we reached 50 teams, 2016 he reached 100 teams by 2017 we hosted 250 teams and about five years ago we had only four teams but after five years of consistency, we had 250 teams.

“Initially in 2012/13 when you write proposal to sponsors they don’t even reply, they don’t even look at your email but in 2017, they are the ones who are calling us, they ask what can we do together and I tell them check your email I sent to you in 2012, we can do what I sent to you in 2012.

“So it is really important to do the first thing and build on top of that thing. The fact that we had a lot of programs running means that, we have already done the hardest part. If you have over 10 players who trusted you as coaches to give them the skills that they required to succeed, that means you have already done the hardest part and sometimes you don’t understand that is the coaches. You can imagine over 10 or 20 players who believed that you, out of nothing in this world are the ones who have made their various dreams to come true.

“In Africa is very difficult for the grassroots teams to sit down with Federation heads to tell them their problems, they don’t focus on grassroots. For us we are trying to close some of these gaps. If they are not going to help us, let help ourselves, if they don’t want to help us. We have twenty talented coaches here and we will build them, in five, six years, they will calling us to say, the program we had in 2022 has helped us.

At the end the workshop, all the 20 coaches received Jerseys from Green Sports Africa partnered Mastercard Foundation to support their grassroots football.