Pitch projects
On every trip our coaches comment on just how “challenging” the community pitches are - back home they wouldn’t just be deemed unplayable, we wouldn’t even consider them for football. And yet the kids in Rwanda don’t complain - they just get on with what they have and make the best of it with grace and positivity.
By improving their pitches we not only make football better, but hopefully we can help the whole community
Bisesero pitch project, Karongi District
This school and the surrounding Bisesero area is very close to our hearts. Each trip we travel to the West of Rwanda to spend a few days here.
The village and nearby hills have a particularly poignant Genocide story - around 60,000 people gathered in the hills, as it was one of the few places of Tutsi resistance in Rwanda. Only 1,500 survived, the final massacre taking place when the French troops who had been protecting them, suddenly and unexpectedly withdrew.
This resulted in a huge feeling of distrust towards white Europeans, which Scottish charities have spent two decades trying to recover.
Therefor the Bisesero pitch felt like the perfect opportunity to help…it really was “challenging” for the players! The un-flattest piece of land football we’ve seen football played on, with a telegraph pole and concrete block on the pitch
Our mission for 2024 was to help them develop a pitch to be proud of…
From this….
To this….
With an initial donation from our 2022 coaches, work on the pitch started in February 2024 during our visit. A huge movement of earth was the first stage, lowering the “road end” to build up the opposite side/slope (see below)
A further donation from our February ‘24 group funded the next stage of building retaining walls on both sides, putting in pipes for drainage and getting the surface ready for grass seeding in September.
The last stage - compacting the excavated slope to support the pitch, then fences and goal posts to complete the job.
By November 2024 the work was complete and the grass planted, to grow over the rainy winter season
Work began in Feb ‘24 to build up the side of the pitch opposite the road. The pole in the photo (see the blue line) marks the height of the pitch and where it would be built up to
The digging would continue along the dotted line above (with the telegraph pole being moved by the energy company), several meters deep. This would be reinforced with a tiered wall that would double as a seated area for spectators
Comfort International Street Rescue Transitional Centre, Kigali
Batsinda street kids rescue in Kigali has a place in the hearts of all our coaches.
Run by Scottish charity Comfort International, many of the children at Batsinda were brought in from a life living in the local rubbish dump, which was safer for them than the streets… Batsinda gives them a home, food, clothes and supports them through school. Hearing them tell their stories is one of the most inspirational and humbling things I have ever witnessed
The dream of David Gasana, who manages the centre, has been to build a transition centre - a safe place where kids can first recover from the trauma of the streets.
This dream is becoming reality - funded by Scots, building has started. The plans include an area for football, which we would love to support in some way if we are able to.
https://comfortinternational.org/what-we-do/street-kids-rescue/
The inspirational David Gasana, an ex-street kid and genocide survivor who now manages the centres in Kigali for Comfort International.
Can we help turn this into a football pitch for the street rescue kids?