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19 March 2009

The Deputy Minister of Education, Adv Andre Gaum, will hand over football kits on 20 March 2009 at an event to be held at Byletts Combined School in Cintsa Village, near East London in the Eastern Cape. The programme for this event will include a mini football tournament, and will start at 08h30.

The Department of Education is partnering with the dream fields project to provide underprivileged rural schools with football kits. The department is donating 36 football kits to underprivileged rural schools across all nine provinces. This is in addition to the more than 500 schools already benefiting from the initiatives of the partnership between the Department of Education and the dream fields project. The aim is to re-introduce a football league system in schools and to promote school sport, especially in underprivileged rural schools.

The dream fields project aims to put resources for playing soccer into disadvantaged and underprivileged rural schools across South Africa. This is done by providing rural and disadvantaged schools with football kits and equipment as well as building football fields where required. Dream fields founder John Perlman says: “This programme of rewarding well organised schools in rural areas is a fantastic idea because it takes the beautiful game to those communities that could be left out of the 2010 excitement. But it does so in a way that reminds all of us that soccer, wonderful as it is, is just a part of the bigger life of a school.”

Issued by: Department of Education
19 March 2009
Source: Department of Education (http://www.education.gov.za)