Building a legacy for our children

The South African Rugby Legends Association has been running a number of projects designed primarily to uplift the disadvantaged people of South Africa. As a result, literally tens of thousands of children have been through Sarla clinics conducted by rugby legends who have given freely of their time.

In this way we have been able to uplift at grassroots level while ensuring that the South African rugby pool of talent encompasses the country as a whole.

The genuine multiracial nature of these efforts and the way in which rugby is meeting the challenge is truly gratifying to us all.

Here are the major projects we undertook in 2007, which are continuing and consolidating in 2008. The legacy parks set out below are the feature that most excites me as they not only build bridges between communities, but also afford sporting and learning opportunities to communities where they did not exist before.

1. Rugby for Africa
This programme has been designed over the five years of our existence and is the core of what we do to help grassroots rugby — that is, schools and clubs. It consists of five pillars:

player-coaching clinics by Legends members;
coaching clinics to the coaches of schools and clubs;
coaching clinics to the referees of schools and clubs;
coaching clinics from Boksmart (a new safety programme, which we were instrumental in launching with CBPJF); and
tag rugby with kids and corporates.

2. Iqhawe (Champion or Hero)
This programme identifies talented kids in rural regions together with the rugby union development officers. For example, in KwaZulu-Natal we started with 4 500 kids and finished with 120 — 40 each in Under-13, Under-15 and Under-17. We take these 40 and over a seven-month period we teach them rugby and social skills, and address issues such as Aids, drugs, crime and loyalty.

3. Legends Adopt a School programme
Here we have identified more than 100 top traditional rugby schools in the country and held a series of indabas over the past 18 months. These schools have agreed to:

adopt a development school in their community and help it from a sport and education purpose;
implement a safety programme using the new Boksmart to reduce injuries at schoolboy level; and
implement a code of conduct among their pupils, parents, staff and supporters.

4. Street kids crime-prevention programme
Together with the national and regional commissioners within the South African Police Service, we have launched a programme to get street kids playing sport and eating a balanced diet through supplements and nutritional food with the ultimate goal of getting them off the streets to reduce crime.

5. Legacy parks
Together with another NPO — Sport Talent Identification — we have launched multipurpose legacy parks that are owned by the communities within previously disadvantaged areas and used as follows:

7am to 5pm: Sporting codes and schools run clinics and programmes free of charge for all sports and help identify talent.
5pm to 10pm: Corporate leagues such as five-side soccer, tag rugby, three-side hockey and action cricket use the facility at a reasonable cost, which will ensure the sustainability and maintainability of the parks. These parks will be built at a corporate’s expense as part of its CSI spend; in return it will receive branding rights.
10pm to 2am: The SAPS will be at the legacy parks to hand out meals, the kids will play sport and hopefully the sporting codes will identify talent. Once tired they will be bussed to shelters for a warm bed and breakfast and return the next day for lectures in the community centre about Aids, drugs, crime and so forth.

The above are the endeavours with which Sarla are currently occupied. It is a truly rewarding experience to be part of something that will provide not only sportsmen and -women of the future but also more rounded individuals who will be a credit to society.