Siphelele in action as a football coach

It is always good to do something and be recognized. For the past two and a half years Sithule and me have always been going to schools for Life Skills Training and tournaments where we would meet with the kids and teachers. But now I got the chance to look at our job as life skills trainer s from another point of view. In schools we ran Life Skills Sessions on many different things, with the main emphasis being on HIV. Kicking the ball around with kids was fun for me and made me really want to stay around in schools and very proud of the job I do. Teachers were very kind to let us in to their classes so we always worked hard to build that relationship.

Now, thanks to WhizzKids United, I got to move from the field to the office which is great because, as much it has been great being in the field, our newer trainers need an experienced voice to help them find their feet. So I feel honoured to be chosen to represent the Life Skills team at the office and try to make the Life Skills programme to be more fun and educational from all angles. It will be challenging for me to alter my way of teaching and transferring information from the kids way of doing things to the adults way, but with the training I have received and still want to receive it will be possible. We may face a couple of obstacles along the way of growing, but I know that with the team I have nothing will stop us from achieving our goals.

My goal is to get all trainers to be on almost the same level in terms of facilitating the training and knowledge of the manuals. We need to be best in everything that we do so our sessions can be fun for trainers and kids. The best way is to share ideas and problems in order to come with fresh and new solutions. Also, I will try to show them how I get around certain things in primary and in high schools and share my experience in working with kids. We will have the best times when it comes to translating complicated words from the manual to youth language and thus make the manual as easy as possible to deliver to the kids.

I’m looking forward to working with all the different trainers and all the challenges I might face. In future I believe we will move forward as a unit so our objective will be met commonly for we are a team that does a great job – so let’s do it together!