More than 3000 children (boys and girls) of age between 9-15 years will take part in the 8th edition of the annual Watoto Wasoka Christmas Cup at Ganyana Junior School in Jjeza, off Mityana road.
Founded in 2009, the Watoto Wasoka – Football Made in Slums – is a youth-led football for development organization based in the heart of Kampala’s biggest slums. Watoto Wasoka Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Francis Mugoya said that they want to foster football as a vehicle for positive social change in the lives of Uganda’s slum children.
“We seek to change lives through structured football programmes. We organize the biggest football events for youth in Uganda with our last slums derby attracting more than 1,500 kids while the last Christmas camp had more than 2,5000 kids,” he said.
The eighth edition since inception commenced on last Saturday and will run for a week till this Saturday. The previous edition was hosted in Nakaseke and like this year, the camp had boys and girls in the age groups of U9s, U11s, U13s and U15s.
This year, the camp will bring together 3,000 boys and 200 girls. “The teams will be accommodated at Ganyana Junior School, and the school grounds will host the games. In organizational regards, Watoto Wasoka will accommodate, feed and provide water to all the participating boys and girls. Our team of volunteers will organize daily training and matches for the kids and manage the camp to ensure that it becomes another harmonic and joyful event. The week–long camp shall be filled with smiles, skills, celebrations, and a joyous retreat from the harsh reality these kids are forced to call their daily lives.
The camp will also feature fun and learning including motivational talk by established footballers as Moses Waiswa, Mustafa Kizza, as well as musician Rickman Manrick.
There will be also be creative sensitization programs on WASH (Water, Sanitation &Hygiene), Sex Education & HIV/AIDS in this year´s camp.
