A few days of my life - impressions for a lifetime
Upon departure for Saly in Senegal last Monday, I was very excited. Excited about what would meet me. How would I respond to what I was about to see? Today is Saturday, and I am back in Norway. Very happy for being back, and extremely grateful for myself and my children growing up here in a safe environment, with social systems and schools giving us the opportunity to choose to realize our dreams.
What we saw in Senegal was a lot of the opposite. Not many schools, an everyday fight to get food and shelter, but still children (and grown ups) with a smile around their face combined with a friendliness impossible to describe. Today I feel a lot richer in life, knowing that myself and the ManagerLeague community have seized the possibility to help some of these people in getting a life with dignity and where they can provide for their families.
Diambars is based on giving children education through their passion for football. Children tend to dream about their future; a future where they are champions in life. Not everyone can become football champions, and those who lack the required skills, will still get an education, in order to become champions of life. In the school, one hour of football, means one hour of studying theory as well. No school – no football!
The institute in Saly is now self sustainable, meaning that the running costs are covered by the income the institute generates. The school now employs 80 people locally! The next step is now to start building the girls-school and “satellites” on 16 different locations in Senegal. These satellites will be able to host 200 students every day, giving 3200 people daily education. The girls-school that will be build next to the boys-school, needs to find a model on how to cover the running costs through operations or additional funding.
We had a ceremony on Wednesday where we launched the start of this project. Some of the girls who will attend the school was there and had a football session with some of the female players on the Norwegian National team. The pride and gratefulness they showed was fantastic. I held a short speech after the match and the project has now officially started.
On Thursday, we went for a trip to see how the inhabitants lived. We saw a lot of poverty and some sights I will never forget. Yet, again, the friendliness of the people was still there. We have a lot to learn from this culture.
We also visited the Tromsø player "Kara"s home. His family brought us straight in to their house and showed us their new living room with a new sofa and a picture of Kara in his Tromsø football shirt as the only picture on the wall.
Shortly after, the whole family and our group of people where dancing to African rhythms and singing on their doorstep – absolutely fantastic (and not possible to describe)! As he has become a professional footballer, he is now also able to secure the future for his family back home in Senegal. Karas signing has also given valuable income to the Diambars Institute.
In the end this all leads to me asking myself – how can we contribute more? The most important thing we can do is giving money to secure a future for the next generations by building schools and providing jobs. In addition to that, our clothes that we do not use anymore is very much needed. Many people do not have proper clothing and I am sure that we throw away a lot of clothes that would be seen as luxury items in Senegal.
The clothes are difficult for us to organize through ManagerLeague, but I know that both I, personally, and Fifth Season will continue to support Diambars and to make sure that the girls-school will give education to Senegalese girls with a passion for life and football! I am proud of all the donations coming from our community so far, and I hope that I can be equally proud next time I go to visit the Diambars academy!
My speech:
I have a dream, about life. Children have dreams, about their future!
Making these dreams come through is often a question of getting the right education. You need education to become a doctor, you need education to become a footballer. What kind of education varies, but in the end, we all need education to succeed in life!
My dream is about giving both boys and girls the same opportunities to fulfill their dreams and to succeed in life. And with this school, I hope that my passion for giving equal rights to proper education, will lead to equal success in life!
So let us fulfill our dreams, both the ones about life all those about the future!
Thank you all for supporting us in supporting Diambars! Let us all continue to do so!
Yours truly,
Chairman
Diambars bank account # for direct transfers from Norway: 9858 05 27205 (set ManagerLeague as a remark on the transfer)
