In an “unlikely” partnership between Black Bulls, a Mozambican football association based in the municipality of Matola, Maputo province, and the NGO AIDGLOBAL took books, dreams and football into the field, aiming to provide greater access to Quality Education through sport.
On April 13, 2023, Black Bulls players traveled to Chibuto, in Gaza province, to interact with the children of Malehice Community School, one of five Little Schools created in 2022 by AIDGLOBAL, in the context of the project “Educators on the Move – An Itinerant Education for Early Childhood”.
During their trip, the Black Bulls team went to meet and participate in the work that the NGOD carries out in the area of Early Childhood Education. With their new official equipment that bears the AIDGLOBAL logo, the players sang, danced and played with the children, having offered them snacks and donations, as they have been doing, within the scope of the activities that the Organization implements on the ground.
They also became storytellers, both in Changana and Portuguese, delighting the children around them, highlighting the reading of the short story “The Artisan and the Juggling Monkeys”, one of the four bilingual books released by AIDGLOBAL, written and illustrated by young Mozambicans, to promote a taste for reading and reduce high levels of illiteracy in Mozambique. An exemplary alliance that came to complement the proper functioning of the Community Schools.
With one voice, too, the students of Chimundo High School welcomed the Black Bulls who, in their own way, sought to motivate them to gain more reading habits, making them see that the book is a privileged way for a broader and better knowledge of the world.
Dino Dulá, sporting director of Black Bulls, made a point of saying: “[the partnership] is based on how we Black Bulls can rehabilitate the Chimundo Secondary School School School library, we can put books in the library so that about 4,000 students and 70 teachers at the School can make good use of the library (…) It's a school that serves the local community. ”
During the month of April, the presentation game of Mozambola 2023 was also held, which led the Black Bulls team to play, side by side, with AIDGLOBAL, in favor of greater access to Preschool Education for children living in rural communities. A differentiating championship, with a sense of solidarity.
As football, a sport that brings together the most varied social strata, Susana Damasceno, founder and president of the board of AIDGLOBAL, states that “thinking about a sport with this scope and thinking that it can be a vehicle for promoting reading, thinking that these players can also be Reading Ambassadors, we thought it would be a perfect match between what is the will to take reading, by this Mozambique outside, through young players, who are also influencers”.
Football, as well as sport in general, is a powerful instrument in the process of social and school integration of young people, by transmitting values such as respect for others, living with differences, deconstructing prejudices and dealing with defeats and victories that will arise in their lives. Anyone who has practiced sports knows that it is an effective agent of social transformation that impacts and brings the most vulnerable people closer to society, keeps children away from violence and translates into an effective tool for Education, Training and Inclusion.
The excellent relationship between Black Bulls and AIDGLOBAL aims to endure in time and promises to bring mutual benefits that, together, will continue to value the importance of the book, rehabilitate and equip more school libraries, produce more books for children in the communities where the Organization also created Community Schools.
The action, part of the “Passport for Reading” program, aims not only to fill gaps in libraries and schools in the province of Gaza, but also to strengthen and expand the “Network of School Libraries of the District of Chibuto” and also to equip several municipal libraries.
The “Passport for Reading” program, created in 2008, is the largest intervention program of AIDGLOBAL, in Mozambique, within the scope of combating illiteracy and encouraging reading and, through which, creates, equips and supports municipal and school libraries, in Gaza Province, promoting activities of reading animation and the training of techniques and teachers and librarian teachers.
