OVER 1,000 CHILDREN RECEIVE EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT AS SIA CALLS FOR MORE GOVERNMENT, STAKEHOLDER INVOLVEMENT

Issued on 16th June, 2021.

Sport in Action(SIA) joined the rest of the African community in commemorating the Day of the African Child whose theme is “30 years after the adoptionof the Charter: accelerate implementation of Agenda 2040 for an Africa fit forchildren”.

As a sport-for-development organization, SIA acknowledges the Day of the African Child (DAC) as an important day to promote children’s rights and welfare issues.Firstly, we would like to thank our partners from Norway, UK and the United States who have made it possible for our organisation to implement its programmes that support the growth of a child holistically in a number of districts.

As of today, SIA is supporting over 1,000 children both in community and government primary and secondary schools where K300,000 has been spent on the children because we believe that for Africa to have a better environment, it is important that children acquire quality education.In the area of child safeguarding, we have formulated policies that are supporting the implementation of our projects in schools and communities because it is only important that we have policies that offer support in order to create a better environment for all children.To ensure that capacity building is realised, SIA has trained community coaches and peer leaders with skills to facilitate effective community activities. This is where we have programmes dedicated to children living with disabilities through homebased activities within their home environment.

We are alive to the fact that the African child, and indeed the Zambian child stillfaces a number of challenges that include sexual abuse, rape and physical abuse. In order to tackle these, we have designed programmes that are able to protect the children in homes and communities. We have gone further to create programmes that detect issues of Sexual Gender Based Violence and tools to be able to monitor and create a better environment where referral systems are there for help to befound.As SIA, we continue to be a leader and point of reference in the area of Play and Recreation in our country thanksto programmes where children learn a number of things thereby creating safespaces such as play parks and playgrounds where we are building capacity forcoaches.

In conclusion, we are calling on the Government and other key stakeholders to implement and uphold the aspirations of the Agenda 2040 for an Africa fit for children by allocating resourcesin education, child protection, sport recreation and Gender Based Violence prevention.

Statement Issued by: Frankson Mushindu