King’s Sports Ministry has recently trained 20 children workers in Apac, Northern Uganda, in Sports ministry programme. 

The training ran from Saturday 14th May and culminated in a great practical session with children on Sunday 15th May.  The training included an introduction to sports ministry, KSMU sports ministry model, Team building and Sustaining a purpose-driven sports ministry programme.  Participants were very pleased with the event and we hope to return again soon.

The UK King’s Camps website has been re-developed over the last few months and has finally been launched in preparation for the forthcoming Spring Bank and Summer seasons.  Features of the new site include fresh images and descriptions of all of our programmes and packages, videos and maps. 

New programmes featured include Jump, our brand new performance and dance camp developed in partnership with British Gymnastics.  We’re offering children the chance to experience new and exciting performance-based sports and activities like cheer, street dance, acro and rhythmic gymnastics.  Best of all, because it’s our 20th birthday this year and we’re feeling generous, Jump is completely FREE of charge to all children attending the camp. www.kingscamps.org

This year is a landmark year as it was 1991 when we first organised a camp for children. Our vision to help children reach their potential, has now affected over 1/4 million children, across the UK and Southern Africa.

We are celebrating this with a party in Sheffield this August and we have invited key people from past and present who have been instrumental in our success and growth.

This will include fun activities, food and a chance for people to catch up with friends.

We will take the opportunity this year to thank all those that have been involved in our organisation in any way however big or small.

Gaborone, Botswana’s capital city will become cycling mad as it hosts an open-entry 100km sportive event as the final stage of a seven day, 1,000km cycling tour from Kasane to Gaborone.

We have just started our fundraising campaign with riders from UK, USA and Botswana seeking to raise  BWP500, 000 (about £50,000) to be shared equally amongst the participant charities.

The aims of the event are to raise the profile of the participant charities’ missions, increase the level of physical activity in Botswana, particularly cycling and provide international exposure to Botswana.

The Challenge History 

Since 2007 volunteer riders and support staff linked to the King’s Foundation in the UK have undertaken annual sponsored bike challenges across the UK, France and Italy raising around BWP500, 000 for the King’s Foundation’s work in southern Africa.

Click here to visit our fundraising site

Lunnyo Children Centre is a new partner that joined the King’s Foundation Uganda in October 2010.  So far they have started well by running the sports ministry programme regularly with children. 

Christine, the Project Director herself has a testimony on how sports has transformed her life.  She says, ‘I’m now very flexible and have better health due to doing regular sports with children’.  Christine S, LCC Director

Our country director visited the project on Wednesday 23rd March 2011 and met with Christine Ssenyondo and a teacher, Christine Muwonge, as they run sports with 50 children at Lunnyo field in Entebbe.  LCC has a total of 130 children.

Every Wednesday and Friday boys meet together for soccer at Mother Theresa Resource Center (MTRC) in Botswana. This is one of the programs that was started by the King’s Foundation last year. We want to create a more close relationship with the children of monarch thus the starting of this program. After every soccer practice Mukani gathers the team together, to teach them values through sports and life skills that the children can use. Since the introduction of this program the children have the sense of belonging, they are more responsible and have gained the respect for each other and the coaches. Mukani has become the father that some of these children do not have. He personally visits each child’s home to find out how they are doing in their school work and at home generally.

Mukani has dedicated his time in assisting these boys to be responsible and he is a role model to them. Mukani first volunteered with King’s Foundation in 2005. He has been loyal to the Foundation; in 2006 he traveled to Uganda for a training course, where he performed exceptionally. We have seen Mukani grow in leadership skills and in communication. Mukani’s leadership skills were display when he led a team of volunteers around Botswana for a sports leadership tour; he also had an opportunity to be part of a team that travelled to Durban for a training. He is indeed a remarkable person that has contributed to King’s Foundation

During the month of December, King’s Camps Botswana hosted a two-day Sports and Leadership Training led by one of UK’s best King’s Camps managers (Lee Purdy). Lee is a PE teacher who has qualifications in almost every sporting code. Delegates that attended were from various sporting clubs, associations and teams in Gaborone.

The aims of the training were two-fold: to increase knowledge about how to be an effective leader/coach and to have delegates learn various warm-up and small game ideas that could be used during practical demonstrations and active participation. Topics covered included:

*Roles and Qualities of a Coach

*Personal Coaching Philosophy

*Professionalism

*Health and Safety

*Warm-up, team-building & adaptive games

The two-day training was filled with great learning experiences and excitement for the delegates. King’s Camps Botswana will continue to host such training for leaders in the community in order to fulfill their mission of developing sport in Botswana. —

In 2010 we were privileged to provide more than 960 places on King’s Camps for UK disadvantaged children through the Supporting Families Programme.  This provided respite from the day to day stresses that many children and their families are experiencing and made a huge difference to them personally and to their school holidays. 

“At an awful time in our lives it made a huge difference to our family.”

“It made an immense difference to our family…we are so grateful that we were given the opportunity to send the children to King’s Camps.”

These are just a couple of the many positive comments we received from families who benefitted through the Supporting Families places last year.  Partnerships with schools, children’s services, foster care organisations and hospices have ensured that families most in need receive places and with the grant we received from Children in Need we were able to offer additional support to those in extreme circumstances helping us to fulfil our promise of ‘making a difference’.  

In 2011 we plan to provide even more Supporting Families places and will be applying to similar agencies as Children in Need for funding which will help us develop the programme further.   For information on how you can help us to ‘make a difference in 2011′ please email supportingfamilies@kingscamps.org or call us on 0845 643 5270.

The last weekend in October saw an exciting new development in South Africa with the first sports ministry training taking place in Durban.  A team from Botswana along with Nick, South Africa Region Manager, travelled to Durban to lead a 3 day sports ministry course.  Delegates came from local schools, churches, NGO’s and local government offices and were 25 in total.  The training took place at Lily of the Valley, a charity established in Durban to care for chilldren affected by AIDS/HIV and including training on Leadership, Planning & Organising, Team Building and Explaining the Gospel.   During the afternoon the delegates put into practive what they had learnt by running programmes for the children. 

The event was a great success and impacted greatly on those who attended.  ”I’m definitely going to implement what i learned here in my school.”  “The workshop was a blessing to me and I thank God for bringing The King’s Foundation into my life.” 

This is just the start of what we hope will develop into a lasting partnership and will develop into further outreach work across South Africa.

Over the last year St Francis Chapel has become a force to reckon with when it comes to holding Sports Sunday. Once a quarter their Sunday school goes sports crazy where they gather the children and go through the KSM model. With all projects there are adjustments to be made and St Francis doesn’t have a huge space which is a viable for sports but they do have a small grass area and a huge indoor hall. They started with around 350 children and increased greatly this last Sunday with over 500 children attending over three services – amazing! Last Sunday they had great fun, and gave Luke football to teach at the 11am service with around 40 kids.
KSM are planning to do more coaching with their 20 strong team of volunteers early next year to equip them in new games they can do with their children. Exciting times.