WHO DO WE TARGET?
Sport for Life! programmes are based at Test and International Cricket Grounds in Pakistan. We target 10-16 year old boys and girls who attend state or voluntary sector schools where sport and IT facilities are often poor. We also target talented young sportsmen and women who may need extra help with literacy and numeracy.
The programmes take place during and after school hours during the week, at weekends and in school holidays and consist of between 2-5 hours of maths, English, ICT, healthy lifestyle training and cricket. Specialist teachers and coaches are sourced from the Education and Sports departments in each country and encouraged to motivate and inspire the young people as well as provide them with much needed help.
We build learning centres that house between 10-20 state-of-the-art desktop computers, interactive whiteboards and classrooms to enable small classes of young people to properly focus on specialist curriculums. We use the cricketing facilities that the cricket stadiums have in place, including practice nets and in some cases indoor facilities.
We have put in place bi-lateral partnerships, such as with Warwickshire County Cricket Club, Surrey County Cricket Club, Sport for Life! Community Cricket Leagues in Birmingham - and soon other cities in England - to further motivate our young people and encourage active communication between them and the professional players.
Sports ambassadors and celebrities are actively sourced and invited to visit the Sport for Life! programmes in Pakistan and the UK to lend their advice and experience to young people. Most recent visitors include Mushtaq Ahmed, England spin bowling coach, Mohammad Akram former Surrey CCC player and ambassadors include Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Shahid Afridi. We encourage PR and media activity around these visits and have achieved television news and national media throughout the region including BBC Radio5 Live and broadsheets through Pakistan and the UK.
Each Sport for Life! learning centre is named after key people or companies in the country and naming of those centres in Pakistan will be released later in 2010.
Finally, we fundraise for all the programmes. Our project managers Live Sport CIC Ltd. in London, raise money through private and public trusts and foundations, individuals, the public sector including the UK government and private sector in both Pakistan and the UK. They have been successful so far in identifying key sponsors and partners in the UK for the first Sport for Life! learning centre in Mirpur.
