Invicta Valiants donation of kit, footballs, football boots, trainers, cones, sports equipment, educational literature and pens were delivered to the Donata Disability School in Mkushi Zambia during the school half term break at the end of May 09 by David Ramzan in the club/school link project.

The Donata School is attended by children from the local area who all have a specific disability, including visual impairment, deaf, learning difficulties and physical disabilities.

Hardly any mainstream schools in Zambia have children with disabilities attend, as they are not considered worthy of education. The children at the Donata School are not able to access any sport activities apart from those now organised at the school. Julie Meikle Venter, one of our former coaches, helped our club link up with the school and will be helping the school in running the sports programme set up by the club.

The schools patrons Adrienne and Simon Hunt, local farmers, arranged the visit via Julie who has helped out at the school in the past as a volunteer. Simon Hunt became involved with the school around five years ago, since then his wife Adrienne has taken over the administration and school development. Their farm is mostly agricultural,

producing maze, wheat and soya crops, but they also have a herd of cattle, cross-bred ‘Boran’, as well as a small flock of North African sheep. The cattle and sheep are farmed mostly for meat that is sold locally. There are many large farms in the area of Mkushi; some are run by farmers moving up from Zimbabwe, most are family run businesses with a majority of the farm workers coming from the local population.

The Donata School on the outskirts of Mkushi village is made up of four classrooms and a small office, these five rooms are part of a larger building owned by the local Catholic Church and the school pay a rent to use the rooms as a school. Outside next to the school building is a small simply built open kitchen area, and in front of the school a small patch of grass that is used as the school play area. The children grow a few vegetables next to the play area, and keep a few chickens for eggs and on special occasions a chicken is used for celebration meal.

During the weeks activities the head teacher ‘Donata Kalunga’ who founded the school, made one of these celebration welcome meal, a tradition carried out for special visitors to the school. It is customary for the school to serve up a chicken to guests at the school, and during the club’s visit we were honoured to be served a special dinner traditionally cooked by Donata herself, accompanied by the Zambian main staple diet of mealie-meal, a mixture of ground maize and vegetables. Donata asked that we carried out this traditional ceremony with the Invicta Valiants players to say a very big thank you for the club’s work with the school when we returned home. Simon and Adrienne of 'Friston Farm' supplied some maze, Soya beans and some local produce that could be brought back to the UK to prepare local recipes for our club’s players to try at the club’s next training session.

The children attend the school from 8.30 in the morning and finish after their school lunch at 1.00 in the afternoon, this lunch is normally the only meal the children will have during the day.

On most school days the children’s curriculum, based on the Zambian national school education system, includes literacy, numeracy, history and geography. There are limited sports activities available, but all the children are enthusiastic footballers. The Donata School provide the children with their only opportunity of any form of education and sport participation.

Most of these youngsters live in the village of Mkushi; they live with their families in small houses. They do not have electricity at the school or in their homes, so their day begins at daylight and finishes at sundown. Some of the children’s parents work on the farms, and their working day can last from dawn to dusk.

Mukishi village has many small communities surrounding the main central market area, and has a long main road running through the village that is lined with small shops each side of this thoroughfair.

The shops sell all types of produce and goods, but do not offer many luxury items.

You can pay for goods in the local currency of ‘Kwachas’ or in British pounds and US dollars, there are around 8,000 ‘Kwachas’ to one British pound. All ‘Kwachas’ are paper notes as there are no coins used in Zambia.

The Invicta Valiants club/school link project was funded through donations to the club, and the club’s own fundraising activities, although we applied for grants through major organisations who work within developing projects for the benefit of people in African, none were able to provide the funding required to run this project, which came to just under £1,000. The club are still trying to raise more funds to help pay for carrying out this project. British Airways were very helpful in wavering baggage costs so the three very large and heavy bags of kit and equipment could be taken out without incurring a fee.

Flights were booked through Dial-a-Flight to secure the most cost effective air flight available.

Simon and Adrienne hunt provided accommodation at their farm while carrying out this very successful project, and also provided transportation for travelling to and from the school each day.

The children at the Donata School, whose ages range from 7-14, are placed in grades dependant on their abilities. There are three teachers at the school who teach the main curriculum subjects and a school cook who prepares the children’s lunch. The teachers were very enthusiastic to learn some football and sports games to help the children’s development in their education and social lives. During the week a fun packed series of football and sports activities were carried out to give all the youngsters a chance to play games and have some fun doing so, a break from their regular schooling activities.

At the start of the week the children were presented with their club shirts, and were given a day off their usual schoolwork to spend their whole school day playing some football games. But before the football activities began, the children sang a song of welcome and thanks to Invicta Valiants.

On the small patch of ground outside the school the activities started off with some fun games played to ‘Samba’ music, then the children played some football games on a local main schools football pitch that was made available for the children’s use during the week. The children were introduced to some ‘GUBOG’ fun games, and the day was finished of with a match.

The following days were taken up with some more fun warm up games, several GUBOG small sided games, and an introduction to the Mid Kent and Ashford School Sports Partnership’s Inter~Intra League to involve the Donata School in some sporting events and international cross curriculum activities.

The Mid Kent & Ashford School Sports Partnership donated sports equipment to run an Inter-Intra sport activity with Wyvern School and Donata School, and the children at the Donata School tried out the five sports activities in the programme.

The David Beckham Academy also donated some educational books, posters and postcards, and Barclays Bank Ashford donated a large box of pens. Children at the Wyvern school sent out letters, drawings and photographs to the children telling them about themselves, life at school and living in the UK, and we would like to keep a link going through letters, photographs, and information sent between players, school children and members of the club and schools.

On the last day of the project the children took part in a shooting competition where the youngsters were split into two groups, younger children and older children, a goal donated to the school was put in place, and the children took three shots at the target each, both age groups had two finalists with the winners and runners up being presented with trophies. All the children taking part were presented with club/school link certificates and the youngsters signed an Invicta Valiants England flag that will have pride of place in the club’s trophy cabinet at Wyvern School in Ashford.

All the teachers and children at the school asked to convey their gratitude and thanks to all those at Invicta Valiants in giving them all an experience they will never forget.

At the end of the year, the school may lose their premises as the Catholic Church who owns the building want to rent the rooms out to other parties. The local chief of the area has given the school some land to build a new school and sports pitch, but this is all dependent on funds raised. Simon & Adrienne Hunt are trying to raise the funds to build a school or purchase two containers to turn into classrooms as a temporary measure.

Our club/school link may help the school by way of the British Council that could help promote the work carried our in the UK and in Africa and raise funds for both club and school.

There are also possible grants and funds available in the future to run further programmes in the UK and abroad, and the possibility of some exchange programmes for the children that could see a team going out to play other disability schools and clubs.