CBF Youth Development League
This project's parent organization is The Craig Bellamy Foundation
It operates in Sierra Leone
It uses Football (Soccer)
Entered the Best New Project
More about CBF Youth Development League
The passion for football in West Africa is widely recognised, as is the need to involve youth in sustainable development efforts. Since May 2009, the CBF League has utilised the popularity of football to tackle one of Sierra Leone's major social development and peacebuilding issues – youth exclusion. The exclusion of youth from society, fueled by poor education and unemployment, was a major casual factor in its brutal civil war, in which youth made up a majority of combatants.
After a decade of peace, we capitalised on the absence of an effective youth football League to establish a nationwide structure that is specifically designed to address these issues by involving all youth, including girls, as role models; increasing secondary school attendance; ending a culture of youth violence; and, by raising awareness of health practices and prevention methods.
The League has contributed to developing socially conscious players and is helping to tackle some of the gender disparities in society. As Edward, one of our Team Manager's put it, “The League has helped us to know that football is not only about kicking the ball and that football can be used to shape the behaviour of the people positively”.