Local appeal provides Kits4Kids in Malawi

The Kits4Kids appeal asks people to donate unused football kits to be sent to young children in Africa

Unwanted football kits are providing benefits for children’s charities in Malawi thanks to the Kits4Kids appeal.

Founder Dave Thomas, a coach at Marshalls Football Club, said: ““I know how important football is in Liverpool, and it is obviously just as important in Africa.

Marshalls FC is based at IM Marsh Campus in Aigburth, and started with boys who attended the soccer camps, run by John Moores University.

A chance conversation on a train journey with Sima Berendes, a work colleague at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, was to prove decisive.

Mr Thomas said: “She told me about the Kuunika Foundation
and the work they were doing in Malawi. She told me the
children from Kuunika were playing a football match,
but did not have a kit to wear."

The Kuunika Foundation’s mission is to help Malawian
schoolchildren with education, nutrition, family health, HIV
and AIDS awareness, and economic development.

He launched the appeal using his position as a football
coach to good effect.

Parents of Marshalls FC’s players, and staff at The Liverpool
School of Tropical Medicine - whose children would have
outgrown their kits - were asked to donate them free of charge.

He also persuaded Marshalls FC’s committee to donate some of their older kits to the foundation.

“Old kit generally gets left in a drawer, never to see the light of day," he explained. “If we could collect these kits and send them to the children in Malawi, they could at least get some wear out of them.”

The first kits were taken out to Africa earlier this year, along with other donations including toys and clothing, and Dave was thrilled to receive a team photograph just a few weeks later.

“The picture has made the whole process worthwhile, “ he said. “The look on the boys’ faces says it all.
I’ve seen at first-hand the hard work the foundation does in the region, and to feel part of that is very special.”

Another beneficiary has been Chrisom Children's Club, which aims to bring about long-term change in the lives of girls and boys aged 14 and under who are living and begging on the streets.

Shapestone Kazembe, one of the charity’s workers, understands the importance of football in a social sense.

She said: “Football helps to change the behaviour of some children and even helps children that have been abused on the street to talk. The more they talk, the more we are able to get information from them.”

Kits4Kids supports football in Malawi