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Photo Credit :Jennifer James

What if I were to tell you that the greatest soccer player ever known started off  by kicking a sock filled with newspaper around the streets of Sao Paulo?  Or that one of our top American basketball stars  bounced around between apartments for the early part of his life while his 16 year old single mother looked for work?   Both Pele and LeBron James  grew up in poverty, but were able to rise above it through sports.  Pele’s father had been a soccer player too, but his son brought his failed dreams of success to fruition a generation later. LeBron was sent to live with an Uncle who introduced him to football, sparking a love of athletics that would take him to the top.  There are numerous stories like theirs. Getting involved in sports has the potential to turn kids lives around, and not only for those who become professional athletes. Access to sports gives hope to children who may simply gain the discipline and drive to lift themselves out of poverty. It can expose them to the positive example in a coach or mentor that they may never have had otherwise, and give them the confidence in something that can spill over into other areas of their lives.

We have seen time and again how beneficial sports can be in any child’s life, and in Zambia Save The Children works to help give kids a better life by funding the Sport in Action program at Fountain of Hope.    Zambia is a landlocked country in Southern Africa and Fountain of Hope is a center located in the urban capital of Lusaka.

Recently Global Team of 200 hundred founder Jennifer James had the opportunity to visit the Fountain Of Hope center and see the Sport In Action program first hand as an International Reporting Project Zambia Fellow. The new media journalists traveled to Zambia with John’s Hopkins’International Reporting Project to report on global health, specifically HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in the country. Many of the kids who come to Fountain of Hope are AIDS orphans.  In her post about the visit on Babble.com Jennifer writes:

 “In Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, the latest numbers say there are around 2000 street kids, says Kenny Hau, outreach coordinator at Fountain of Hope. With a total population size of 14 million in Zambia, there are a total of 75,000 street kids throughout the country.”- Jennifer James

The Fountain of Hope Sport in Action program gives some of these children an opportunity to get off the street, even if just for a short while, by providing a safe place for street kids and orphans to attend school, get a meal, play sports, go to the library, and learn skills through its technology program. Some of the children also reside at the center where Fountain of Hope  brings in boys only if they can stay for a full six months. Sport In Action (SIA) is a non-governmental organization (NGO)  founded in 1998 whose purpose is to improve people’s quality of life through sport and recreational activities.

“Sport In Action shall endeavor to use sport and recreation as a tool to improve the quality of children’s lives by providing a programme that will bring about motivation, self-development, child protection and self-reliance through social and economic empowerment”. –Sport In Action Mission

We may not see the next Pele or LeBron come out of this program, but the success is in providing structure and hope in kids lives, and building character to help them thrive. In giving them a safe space and bringing some guidance they are given the chance to grow out of a precarious childhood, into a healthy, and productive adulthood.

I wrote this post as part of The Global Team of 200, a highly specialized group of members of Mom Bloggers for Social Good that concentrates on issues involving women and girls, children, world hunger and maternal health.

Our Motto: Individually we are all-powerful. Together we can change the world. We believe in the power of collective action to help others and believe in ourselves to make this world a better place for our children and the world’s children.