2018 was an exciting year for Cricket Without Boundaries; we coached more children than in any previous year, with over 70,000 children coached. Almost half of these were coached by our team of Ambassadors, and continuing to grow and develop this group of fantastic young coaches is firmly on the charity’s agenda going into 2019.
Meanwhile, our volunteer teams supported the delivery of 9 projects in East Africa and, for the first time for the charity, Jordan. Working alongside Coaches Associations, Ambassadors and, in Jordan, Right to Play and UNHCR, not only did they coach over 37,000 children but also trained over 300 coaches and teachers to deliver cricket with a message.
They used a variety of newly-developed coaching materials to achieve this, including our first non-English materials in Arabic, as well as cards reflecting core messages that could be used as part of games and discussions by coaches and participants.
In our projects in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Cameroon those messages focused on HIV-awareness and gender equality. To evaluate our impact on these key issues we piloted a new evaluation tool, asking participants to work in groups to complete simple creative feedback sheets that asked “what do we learn from cricket”. While in-depth analysis of the results from this is ongoing initial findings indicated four principle themes in participant feedback:
- HIV-awareness knowledge, in particular identification of the core messages of Abstain, Be Faithful and Condom Use as means to prevent transmission and the importance of Testing and Treatment.
- Cricket-skill knowledge, including batting, bowling, fielding, and laws of the game
- Social benefits of cricket, including teamwork and friendship
- Physical and health benefits of cricket
Closer to home, we trained leaders from the North East of England to deliver small-group sessions to girls addressing girls’ empowerment as part of the Let’s Be Women project, ran a Coach Support Worker course and provided seed-funding to support young coaches from the Refugee Cricket Project to complete their Level 2, and signed an agreement to work with Cricket Germany on refugee integration through cricket.
With 2018 proving a year for testing new delivery models, new countries and new projects 2019 will be a key year for the charity to build on this fantastic platform, growing our reach and consolidating the results of the hard work put in by our volunteers for the last 13 years.
If you want to help join us in making this happen, you can get involved as a volunteer in one of two ways.
To volunteer to travel to East Africa for 2 weeks, to deliver HIV-awareness and gender equality education, go to our volunteer now page: http://www.cricketwithoutboundaries.com/volunteer
To volunteer in a role in the UK to keep the charity moving forward, or to volunteer for delivery roles in the UK, go to our volunteer projects page: http://cricketwithoutboundaries.com/vols
Volunteered with CWB before and looking to do something new? Contact Lee Booth to discuss helping launch our project work in Germany: lee@cricketwithoutboundaries.com
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