School Sports Academy

The Future Factory now operates the school sports academy in over 50 schools in the Western Cape . We run a structured sports program in all of the Olympic codes, as well as Netball, Cricket, Golf and Table Tennis. We focus on life skills and specialized coaching. All of our coaches are fully trained, and many are on provincial and national sports teams themselves.

The school sets up a schedule so each class has a block of sport per week, and the sports program is included into the curriculum.

Children are taught the basic skills of a variety of sports codes, as well as life skills. They also have the chance to play on sports teams after school, competing against other schools. A number of the children coached by The Future Factory have now made it to provincial and national sporting levels. We go into each of our schools once a year with a whole school fun day (Wizzards Program), which involves games, sports, face painting and other activities.

Facilities at the schools are extremely limited, some are using parking lots as sporting grounds. Equipment is also very limited, with some areas having just two balls for the entire school. The children come from wide ranging areas, and The Future Factory program aims to provide these learners with alternatives to drugs and gangs, and give them hope for the future.

Each school is allocated a permanent coach, many of whom have been unable to find work and have been trained by The Future Factory to run the Sports Academy programs. Learners in the schools pay between 50cents and R5 per learner per month for the programs, depending on what the school can afford. This money goes directly to the coach in the school to cover their wages. The Future Factory makes no money from the Sports Academy.

In schools where they can't afford to pay any or can afford only part of the fees, the learners bring in 1.5L Coke bottles, which we then claim the refund on. Our aim is to have collected 1 million Coke bottles. This option gives even more children access to our programs.