So it's 1803 here in the UK, and my flight back from SA landed at 0515 this morning.  Meaning I am pretty tired!  But I wanted to write something about my experiences with the Youth Zones, and the value of the work they are doing with young people in the communities in which they operate.

So far I've been lucky enough to visit Youth Zones in SA (Cosmo, Soweto and Mogwase) plus those in Zimbabwe and Mozambique.  Each visit has impressed me, I think the holistic approach the youth zones take by integrating Sports, Life Skills and IT place a great focus on key development areas that are easy for young people to access.  I am also really drawn to the relational way of operating, taking time to build strong relationships with people and communities and trusting that this approach will deliver the right kind of results is really refreshing.  Sometimes in the UK we get so bogged down with needing to know exactly what something is going to deliver that we forget to allow breathing space for the magic of possibility.

The day we visited Soweto was a great example of this.  We didn't plan or prepare anything, yet we sat down after playing football and had a really rich discussion about life, communities, even the London riots!  It was great to just have the freedom to chat and to respond to what came out of the discussions and interests of everyone sitting there.  Everyone from the UK was drawn to the sense of relationship and community, and that is something we are going to take away with us and consider how we can bring that into our lives here.  So for all the guys we met in Soweto we'd like to say thanks for teaching us about life, and to remember that you have much to offer - we are a long way short of having all of the answers!

My challenge to everyone (myself included) is about how we can learn to use football to manage our emotions more effectively.  Winning is an outcome, but not a process.  The process is playing together, and the point is that winning is worthless if no one wants to play with you again!  I have always struggled with getting the balance right, but knowing there is a struggle is a good step towards improving.  I'd like to come back to Soweto next time and see all of us play the game more in the right spirit - volunteering when the ball has gone out off you or when the other team should have a corner.  Football in our communities is what we make it, we all need to challenge each other to make it the right kind of game.

Cheers!