Representatives from the department of education and the Fifa Local Organising Committee (LOC) last week visited a school in Mafikeng to meet the winners of the North West Province leg of the School Confederations Cup.
The two under-14 football teams at the Redibone Middle School won all the competitions in the province and were chosen to represent the North West in the National Schools Confederations Cup, scheduled for later this month.
The cup is part of the My 2010 Schools Adventure Campaign aimed at promoting both education and youth participation in football using the Fifa Confederations Cup and the 2010 Fifa World Cup. The campaign was launched in 2008 and hopes to involve 12 million school children ahead of the football showpieces.
Louis Taylor of the LOC said the campaign is an excellent tool to generate excitement around the 2009 Fifa Confederations Cup and 2010 Fifa World Cup.
”The two largest soccer events in the world must not be felt by the selected few but it must also be experienced by young children especially in school. The events belong to all the people of South Africa,” he said.
As part of the ‘Adopt a Nation’ element of the schools campaign, all of South Africa’s provincial schools two weeks ago symbolically ‘adopted’ the competing Fifa Confederations Cup teams: Brazil, Egypt, Spain, the United States, Iraq, New Zealand, Italy and South Africa.
The schools will then learn more about the culture, football, geography, music and history of the countries they adopted.