Winner — Sports Development Award: Absa Spaces for Sport
With 18 senior soccer clubs sharing one pitch in Gansbaai in the Western Cape, there was clearly a dire need for extra sporting facilities.
In the run-up to the Fifa Soccer World Cup, recognition that sport could help community development led to the opening of the Gansbaai Communal Sport Centre in 2008. “Sport is a wonderfully simple way to break down social barriers and bring people together on even terms. For the youth of our townships, it inspires pride and determination to succeed,” says Michael Lutzeyer of the Grootbos Foundation, which manages the project.
The Gansbaai centre was established by Absa’s Spaces for Sport programme, in collaboration with Football Foundation South Africa, the Overstrand municipality and the Western Cape department of cultural affairs and sport. The site is central to three diverse communities in Gansbaai — Masakhane township has about 12 000 black residents, Blompark is home to about 5 000 coloured residents and the Gansbaai white community numbers about 8 000.
The centre gives youngsters the opportunity to play different sports — soccer, hockey, volleyball , rugby and cricket — and meet others from different backgrounds. The centre offers educational sessions on health and career guidance, as well as structured sport science services such as podiatry and fitness testing.
It is managed by Lutzeyer, who owns the nearby Grootbos Private Nature Reserve and specialises in landscaping with fynbos. “We believe in developing youngsters from local communities, who in the past have not had as many opportunities as others,” he says.
The sports centre builds on an environmental initiative started by the Grootbos team in 2003. Called the Green Futures College, it trains unskilled and unemployed people from local communities in fynbos landscaping, horticulture and ecotourism.
The students generate enough funds through the sales of plants and fynbos landscaping to finance the college. At the Spaces for Sports centre in Gansbaai more than 1 000 indigenous trees are being planted by Grootbos.
Lean Terblanche, the coordinator of this greening project, also organises training sessions, matches and leagues for the teams. “Our young sportsmen and women can contribute to conservation and recycling by bringing in recyclable items. In exchange they receive points, which can be used to ‘buy’ their kit,” says Terblanche.
The Investing in the Future judges were unanimous in their praise of the model. They referred to it as an integrated, comprehensive programme that offers poor communities a range of positive interventions.