Play For Hope

  Sorry for the delay in blog posts. Play For Hope has been hard at work in making future plans for Rwanda and our dreams and vision continue to grow. We have now had our first Board of Directors meeting will be turning in our tax exemption paperwork to the government and are continuing to run our offices in Rwanda. Right now we are also in development of a training course for Rwandan coaches that we hope will not only train coaches to be highly proficient coaching, mentoring, and providing wellness information to their children, but will allow coaches to actually be certified as competent coaches and have built in accountability. Often sports ministry in Rwanda has been based upon ministries coming into the country providing a training and then providing minimal follow-up or determination if their coaching training was effective in changing how coaches trained children. What has been left is coaches with lots of certificates of training and little knowledge of how to coach. Our deepest desire is to create an actual movement among coaches who will receive culturally relevant training largely developed by Rwandans that will bring their sports ability and their ability to raise the lowest children in society to the highest. This will initially lead to a decrease in some of the numbers of children and large events this summer, but rather be traded for real long term change that will deeply impact the lives of children that we work with. Please continue to stay posted with us as we continue to develop into these exciting opportunities.

I wanted to help you to get to know who is working with Play For Hope in Rwanda.  Today I want to introduce you to the man who we are working with intimately to make this happen, Serieux Kanamugire.Serieux is 31 years old and is married to Francine. He has a one year old son named Harmony. Serieux has done street kids ministries with a focus on soccer for eight years. In that time he has owned and trained five soccer clubs the majority of which consisted of street children. He has successfully helped many of these children to get off and remain off of the streets. Serieux was the visonary of the Play For Hope tournament this past summer and set up many of the summer programs including the trainings and many of the clinics. He has received trainings from Youth With A Mission (YWAM) both in Rwanda and in Texas and has been trained by Sports Friends in Ethiopia. In addition, he has assisted in teaching discipleship training at YWAM. He also has run a series of successful ministries including Harvesters and a streetkids drama and dancing program. He was also the Associate Producer of a film entitled Muyurangabou which was shown in the Cannes Film Festival. He has a passion for training leaders and helping children identify and develop their talents.

 I am excited to share that Play For Hope has been able to open our initial office in Rwanda.  This is the first step in ensuring that our programs can be run year round in Rwanda and that we can be registered with the Rwandan government.  Check out video tour of our new offices in Kigali and meet our Rwandan team of Serieux Kanamugire and Christian Gisanura who have been instrumental in the development and growth of Play For Hope.   

This past summer Play For Hope fell in love with a group of street boys who showed the power that sports and mentorship can have to transform lives.  The boys all live near each other and take care of one another.  They often walk upwards of 2 hours with little food just to play soccer matches against opposing teams.  This trip I was able to visit the boys and surprise them with new uniforms from Peace Passers International, which we will be able to keep for them at our offices to use.  We unfortunately cannot distribute the jerseys due to our current limited supply and the high risk of theft if the boys possess the jerseys on the streets.  Check out the video and photos of these excited boys: