In Association with
Ghana Tennis Project 2007
July - November 2007
In preparation for a 5 month volunteer tennis project in Ghana hosted by Sporting Opportunities [formerly Gap Sports] - sponsorship from Sutton Sports Council, The Torch Trophy Trust – London, Sutton and Cheam Round Table and from the general public resulted in over £1,500 in sponsorship towards the project fee.
£2,500 worth of tennis rackets, clothes, shoes, tennis balls and coaching equipment which was ultimately collected prior to the trip, had the good fortune of having construction company Taylor Woodrow kindly agreeing to ship the equipment out to Accra. After our trip, racket specialists PWP Europe and The Junior Clay Tennis Registry cleared out their stock and agreed to donate more equipment out to the tennis volunteers in Ghana to distribute to the community which was great!
Donating the equipment from Accra when we arrived in Ghana - with the help of Bernard, we picked up the equipment from the Taylor Woodrow/Taysec depot in Accra who had kindly shipped it out – signed a few forms and hey presto was all ours!
Donating the tennis equipment made the work of collecting and appealing all worth it. Arriving at the Tennis Academy at the National Sports College in Winneba, a small coastal town in the Eastern Region of Ghana west of the capital Accra, we met Coah Noah and the National Junior Squad [coolest bunch of guys ever] who had very little to work with so it was great for us volunteers to be able to say.... 'here have 400 balls instead of 20’.....
We also donated a ball basket and marker cones so the players could have some structured drills aswell as being able to set up the tennis court using the equipment to give private lessons and conduct International Tennis Number Assessments which is a test to grade the players if they wanted to compete.
National Sports College, Winneba
At the start of the project, donated t-shirts and new shoes were distributed to the children to replace the falling apart ones they were playing in. Awarding the children who were sharing a racket with their very own one was extremely rewarding, teaching them new games and were able to help improve their co-ordination with exercises using the sports equipment. Part of our project fee went towards paying for a locker to be built for Coach Noah to keep the donated equipment in.
Donating tennis equipment and locker for Noah, 2007
Drills with the Junior National Squad
Down with the Kids....
