With the successful Beijing Olympics, costing over £20 billion to stage, finally over, it is truly amazing to see the likes of Kenya and Jamaica in thirteenth and fifteenth place respectively on the medal table. Both extremely poor countries and yet they have produced many of the finest and fastest record-breaking runners on earth. 

During my last trip to Zambia I was lucky enough to experience the annual Sports Events for the Mukuni Chiefdom. Knowing how much is spent on sport in the west it is hard to believe that only four out of the twelve schools in the chiefdom turned up. The reason being that most of the schools could not afford the £25 affiliation fee and out of the four that attended The Butterfly Tree paid for Mukuni and Ngandu School who had failed to raise the funds. 

Photo: Mukuni Olympians

Sport is such an important part of a school’s curriculum and when I saw the effort these children had made to hold this event it was a very humbling experience. Despite the charity funding two mini buses and paying for food supplies many pupils still had to walk ten miles to the grounds, camping out on the floor of a classroom. Zanox kindly donated over 30 footballs which I distributed amongst the local teams. When I visit these remote villages of the Mukuni chiefdom and see the school teams using ‘bag and string’ footballs I am horrified to think of how much is spent on football in the UK. No expensive Nike or Addidas football boots; just bare feet, a patch of dirt and a couple of stakes at each end of the pitch.

With your funds we can provide improved sporting facilities, hard-wearing footballs and netballs complete with HIV/AIDS and malaria awareness logos for as little as £8.