abafana bebhola bayanakekela

Due to the number of requests from TAI's community groups to work with vulnerable children, TAI started Abafana in 2006. This project aims to provide psycho-social support for children by involving young male soccer players as their mentors. Each soccer player was assigned as a mentor to three children. They then spent time with the children, visited their homes, helped them with homework, played games with them and other similar activities.

By involving young men in childcare activities, TAI aims to reduce some of the burden on women - both the female parents/guardians of the children in the project and the soccer players' future female partners.

TAI's role is to:

• Provide the young men with training, including HIV prevention and how to care for and support children, and ongoing mentoring and support.
• Provide life skills training for the children, including oral and personal hygiene.
• Organise activities, events and campaigns that encourage the young men and children to play and have fun together.
• Provide some material support for families in crisis.
• Assist parents/guardians and children to access services such as healthcare and government social support grants.
• Network and refer parents/guardian and children to other service providers as needed.
• Work with local structures and stakeholders to improve the environment for the children and young men.

This has been an extremely challenging and exciting project! Some of its successes include children reporting feeling safe in their homes, more families have access to grants, more children accessing essential services and young men feeling that their relationships with the children are valuable.

Some of the key lessons we learnt were:

• Many of the soccer players valued their role as mentor but the requirement of mentoring three children was too demanding on soccer players. Sometimes the young men cared too much and were at risk of burnout.
• TAI did not have a strongly defined child care policy or policies for assisting children in distress. As such, TAI tried to be too many things to too many people and this reduced our impact. We took children to the dentist, organised campaigns, and hosted tournaments, built houses, planted vegetable gardens, shipped close to 10 tons of food and so much more! It's a wonder we survived!
• There is a need to consider the involvement of children who become too "old" for the programme. Some of the children are now as old as the mentors! It is suggested that the older children become mentors but this could then place an additional burden on girls.