Kids on the Pitch

Soccer practice

Soon after we moved to Dar es Salaam, I was looking for volunteer opportunities when I happened to meet a Tanzanian woman who’d started a group called Kids on the Pitch. Gizelle’s mission was to engage local youths in sports and other activities that would keep them off the streets. Kids on the Pitch held daily soccer practices and weekly games along with workshops to teach kids about reproductive health and HIV.

Gizelle needed volunteers who could tutor the kids in English, and I signed on with a friend. After we started teaching a dozen youths two afternoons a week, other students at the local primary school started coming to our tutorials. We’d divide the kids into groups and get them to tell us about their families in English, sometimes having to resort to playacting and charades. Occasionally we brought decks of cards and dice to play number games with them along with children's books that they could read.

A couple of high school boys from the International School eventually joined us to fulfill their community service requirement. The high school boys designed work sheets on different subjects each week—on the weather or parts of the body, for example—and they helped the children fill in the blanks and discuss them. Sometimes they brought a frisbee or soccer ball to class and taught the kids English terms for the games. The lessons often ended in a lively match on the school playground.

Half the fun of our conversation classes was learning about the children and observing their interactions with each other and with us. Perhaps those connections were just as valuable as the English we taught them.