CBF Youth Development League
This project's parent organization is Craig Bellamy Foundation
It operates in Sierra Leone
It uses Multiple sports
Entered the Sport for Education Award
More about CBF Youth Development League
Our project employs a unique structure using sport as an incentive to address chronically low levels of school attendance throughout Sierra Leone. The League uses football to tackle the issue of education in a country where the general learning experience for children is among the worst in the developing world:
- Youth literacy is only 58% (UNESCO 2010)
- Attendance rates are just 63% at primary school (despite this recently being made free) and drop to 28% at secondary school (UNESCO 2010)
Sierra Leone is a country with very low literacy, poor school attendance, limited understanding of health issues and high youth unemployment. Even when children are enrolled in school, many drop out due to family chores, teenage pregnancy and early marriage, gangs, drugs, and illness. CBF League promotes education through an innovative point scoring system that uses children’s love of football to incentivise school attendance and increase awareness of the overall importance of education with added emphasis on community development projects and life skills.
This is our focus because school attendance is the gateway to education, and education has a multiplying impact on larger social issues including health, economic development, gender equality and human rights.