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Holidays and Volunteers
posted by Oli Walsh on June 19th, 2009
This will be my last blog for a couple of weeks as I am off home to the UK, but will be back!

Marcus is also out of the office next week presenting on behalf of WKU at a FIFA conference in Jo′burg which should hopefully be an opportunity to showcase our programme to alot of key decision makers around the World Cup, so fingers crossed!

Then at the beginning of July Paul is off on holiday to Europe, which co-incides with the school holidays here! Lots of work to do but not enough people in the office!

As always we are on the lookout for more volunteers with empty desks in our offices that need filling! Jessica is coming from Harvard for a couple of weeks to test a new football related project she is developing and then we have Thilo from Germany coming in August. That aside our next volunteers are due in October, so if you want to come join us let us know!
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US Soccer team
posted by Oli Walsh on June 12th, 2009
Yesterday, ten kids from our programme in Rustenburg took part in a training session with the US Soccer team, who are here for the Confederations Cup, in Pretoria.

The kids were recent graduates from the programme and ′won′ the chance by presenting in assembly to their peers, motivations as to why they should go! The ten lucky winners were driven on the two hour trip by Peter from the Department of Education, nothing compared to the 14 hour round trip that Marcus and I undertook!

The kids got a free McDonald′s and watched a 90 minute training session with stars like Landon Donovan and Tim Howard, before getting the chance to meet the players, take pictures, get autographs and talk to them about our programme! The star of the day was ′Lucky′ who managed to get a photo with nearly every player! It will definitely live long in the memory of the kids and their signed shirts will be the envy of all their classmates!

The kids had a great time, so was definitely worth the trip, so a big thank you to the US team.
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Confederations Cup is nearing
posted by Oli Walsh on June 5th, 2009
It was an early start to the week on Monday (5am), to take Paul to the airport, off to monitor our new programme with One to One Children′s fund in Rustenburg. He reported back that the project is going well, with 700 kids through the programme and in a new element to the programme, over 100 kids from the new correctional facility!

We also have the Confederations Cup coming to South Africa, so the kids from Rustenburg will get a once in a lifetime chance to attend a training session with the US National team in Pretoria, and fingers crossed a training session with the All whites, the New Zealand football team!

Aside from that we have the British and Irish Lions coming to these shores to play Rugby, we have been very lucky with all the top sporting events, so some of us are going to see them play the local Sharkies this week.

Okay, its the weekend now, so we are off, have a good weekend!
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