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On the 31st May, I flew out to Windhoek, Namibia, to join the Bhubesi Pride Foundation, with whom I would be volunteering as a rugby coach and coach educator for just over 3 months, returning to the UK on the 5th September. During this time, I travelled through Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Malawi, coaching hundreds of boys and girls the basics of rugby, whilst simultaneously coordinating coach-education courses for local teachers and coaches to further empower them with the necessary skills to continue the progress of the sport.

As a rugby enthusiast with little to no prior coaching experience, I was at first as apprehensive as I was excited; coaching sport to kids is hard enough without the barriers of language, minimal equipment, and limited space. With time, however, I grew to love what I was doing, and settled into a routine that I found difficult to depart from when that moment came. Coaching is a hugely rewarding experience, even more so when it is combined with the empowerment of local teachers to continue from where you’ve left off.

Working with a team of eleven volunteer coaches (boys and girls), a media manager and project manager, our weekly routine went something like this: day 1 we would meet the participating schools and teachers, meet the children, assess our work space and get settled in our ascribed accommodation; Day 2-6 would consist of all the coaches being split between the participating schools, coaching for somewhere between 1- 4 hours before returning to the hostel to collapse; day 7 would consist of a Bhubesi-run touch rugby tournament, assisted by our principle sponsor G4S, who would provide food, drinks, music, gazebos and more. These weeks were intense, often starting around 6am and not finishing until 4pm. We worked in at least two to three locations per country, spending time in very poor townships and sub-urban communities whose opportunities to partake in team sport were very numbered. We generally remained off the beaten track, staying in towns away from the main tourist routes.

Between coaching weeks, we travelled between locations in the Bhubesi bus (she’s called Nala), stopping along the way at some jaw-dropping geographical locations. Alongside this, we also had some spare time to indulge in fun activities like sky-diving, bungee-jumping, game drives and much more.

The Bhubesi Pride Foundation has assembled qualified and dedicated teams of volunteers (‘Pride’ members) to carry out annual coaching expeditions since 2013, supporting rugby and community development in schools and community centres in nine countries across east and southern Africa.

Taking place between January and September every year, it aligns project activities alongside relevant partners – G4S Africa being an instrumental partner for the Foundation – NGOs, national rugby unions, government departments, international schools and local businesses, bringing added value to relationship and capacity building.

If you would be interested to learn more about how to get involved in future projects, please do not hesitate to contact either myself or a representative of the charity. Details of how to sign up can be found on their website at http://rugbyinafrica.org/.