PR, Football Coaching, and African Dead Cows: Is This a Job or What?
By: Laurie | December 3rd, 2007
Oh, the exciting life of Hayley Roach, the PR and Marketing Officer for the Sheffield & Hallamshire County FA. One day she’s doing PR and marketing stuff in England, the next she’s chopping up a dead cow to feed to lions in an African lion rehabilitation program. Oh! The glamour!
(Lions in rehab. I know there’s a Lindsay Lohan joke in there somewhere, but it’s Monday and my brain just can’t make the leap.)
This is actually a cool article, though. The main purpose of the visit was to teach soccer coaching skills to South Africans so they could take them back to their own cities and villages and improve the lives of the kids there.
Living with host families in their very basic homes, which didn’t have bathrooms or kitchens or running water - Hayley got to experience to real African life. Hayley’s role there was to coach coaches and to give teachers and community workers the knowledge and skills to be able to become football coaches.
“There is a severe lack of education and educated people in South Africa, so I felt very useful in going over to help these people learn a few skills about how to be a coach. I worked with almost 100 people in three different communities in the Province, who in turn can now go and deliver football coaching sessions to children, in an attempt to help reduce the challenges that these rural communities face - such as HIV,teenage pregnancy,drugs, reduce crime and uemployment.”
No bathrooms? No running water? I’m guessing the dapper Jose Mourinho will be rushing to sign up any minute.
Once Hayley finished coaching in South Africa, she moved on to spend three weeks working with lions in a Zimbabwean game preserve. (That was where the dead cow came in.)
Am I warped in thinking this sounds like a fun trip?
(For more information on the program, go to the SCORE website.)
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