Refugee Youth Soccer Development Program News

! Football United!

2007 started off with lots of fun as we held our first residential camp in Colloroy. The joint initiative with STARTTS and AMRC brought thirty boys between the ages of 14 and 18 together for a four days of football fun. Blacktown Demons Head Coach Aytek Genc donated his time as head coach for the camp. Assistant coaches were young men who had been trained by our program in December 2006.

A Blacktown Demons home game at Fairfax stadium on March 18 then provided an exciting reunion for the campers. The boys were able to meet the players after the game and talk with them about their experiences playing at high level soccer. They enjoyed watching their camp coach in action at professional level as well.

The program plan for 2007 is rapidly filling up with plans to support both our pillars of action : enhancing and creating opportunities. Football United is working with Blacktown district to set up a sustainable process of assisting with player registration and enhancing family involvement in clubs. The various course models will be further developed to offer coaching and referee courses specially adapted to fit our program population’s needs.

Significant partnerships with STARTTS, LMRC,BMRC, Blacktown Council, AMRC, PCYC and others are enabling us to move forward on a number of our pillar action areas, which will be reported here as they develop. We will be purposely limiting our activity to working on building the foundations for a sustainable program in line with what is feasible with current resources. Enthusiasm for football within these communities is huge, and where our program can’t assist we try to support and connect to others who can.

We’ve been fortunate to have many volunteers regularly connecting with us to assist – a great thanks to all who have offered help!

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