Soccer 4 Hope Extends Hoops 4 Hope’s African Reach By Jack Graves

(July 01, 2010) For the past 16 years, Mark Crandall of Amagansett has been

developing young leaders in Zimbabwe and South Africa, using the pull of sport —

basketball initially, and more recently, soccer, tennis, and chess — to impart the

information and skills southern Africa’s young people need so that they can have reason

to hope.

Though Crandall’s Hoops 4 Hope and Soccer 4 Hope organizations have forged

partnerships with the National Basketball Association, Grassroot Soccer (which has a

presence in a dozen African countries), with 150 southern African schools, and with

some corporations and universities, “We’re still operating on a shoestring,” he said

during a recent conversation.

Soccer 4 Hope was in the news when, in mid-March, Scott Russell, a Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation sportscaster, called attention to the work Crandall’s group was

doing in Cape Town townships “on the forgotten fringe of wealth.”

“It seems that the only news that comes out of Africa is bad news,” Crandall was quoted

as having said. “Perhaps having the World Cup here means that the vast potential of

these people might finally be reflected.”

Russell’s televised report drew much favorable comment. “Absolutely brilliant,” said one

of the correspondents. “The world needs more programs like this and more people like

Mark Crandall.”

“At the moment,” Hoops and Soccer 4 Hope’s founder said the other day, “we’re

running a five-week camp in two of the townships, in Khayelitsha and Guguleta. We’re

there the year round, but, because of the World Cup the government has extended the

three-week winter break to five weeks, and the township kids need something to do.”

Soccer 4 Hope, geared to girls entirely, and toward “the empowerment of women,”

extended the coed Hoops 4 Hope’s reach three years ago. Both programs use the same

life skills curriculum whose goal is to develop young leaders.

“Soccer is Africa’s most popular sport, but it’s political. Women haven’t been on the

radar as far as soccer goes, so it’s provided a niche for us to introduce our life skills

curriculum to young girls, who are at a high risk for getting H.I.V./AIDS — the incidence

of rape and sexual violence there is among the highest in the world — and to talk with

them about H.I.V. prevention and crime and drug prevention, and about our seven

foundation-building ‘tools’ — focus, responsibility, self-esteem, self-awareness, sense of

humor, integrity, and empathy, or ‘ubuntu.’ ”

In Khayelitsha, Soccer 4 Hope’s seven-on-seven games are played on a small turf field,

“an oasis” amid the dearth and dust of Cape Town’s biggest township, which has been

managed for the past five years by Grassroot Soccer.

There are plans for 20 more such fields, said Crandall, who, in answer to a question, said

that Soccer 4 Hope is in 37 schools in Cape Town, has 74 coaches, is mentoring 750 girls,

and has through other events “reached 3,000 others.”

Still, despite the good press, in Canada, Germany, France, and elsewhere, it had been

Hoops 4 Hope’s most trying year ever, said Crandall, who plans to spend more time in

the United States in the coming months in an effort to “achieve sustainability. . . . We’ve

got a six-vehicle fleet, and all need work. The ‘93 GMC Shafer bus, in which we made that

epic, several-thousand-mile road trip from Zimbabwe to Cape Town, is the best.”

While the World Cup had provided “a great boost” (50 of the organization’s children

have been going to World Cup games) and had been “good for the country,” there was,

said Crandall, still a vast amount of work to do.

“As I said, we’re operating on a shoestring. It would be nice to have a shoe . . . a pair of shoes.”