The Crew !


























































....For the 10 month build up before heading out to Ghana, I knew how scarce sports equipment and resources were in Africa, so inspired by a friend of mine Lucy Mills, who did Football Aid in Ghana with the same company, I set up my own appeal ‘Ghana Tennis Aid’ in Association with Global Sports Xperience and UK Charity ‘Tennis For Free’ who I went to Africa as an ambassador for. It appeared in tennis magazines, the internet and local newspapers appealing to the public and sports companies to donate money and tennis/sports equipments towards the community I would be working with in Africa. ‘Tennis For Free’ donated brand new rackets and balls from their sponsors and as a result I was interviewed on a local South London Radio show. This got tennis clubs to collect unused rackets and coaching equipment and local sports shops, ‘Save The Children’ and ‘Sutton Tennis Academy’ where I give some lessons in London donated tennis clothing for the appeal. Approaching Trusts and sponsors resulted in over £1,500 in sponsorship and donations from Sutton Sports Council, The Torch Trophy Trust – London, Sutton and Cheam Round Table and from the general public. I ended up collecting over £2,500 worth of tennis rackets, clothes, shoes, tennis balls and coaching equipment and Construction company Taylor Woodrow kindly agreed to ship the equipment out to Accra for me. After our trip, racket specialists PWP Europe and The Junior Clay Tennis Registry cleared out their stock and sent more equipment out to the tennis volunteers in Ghana for the tennis community which is great!

Donating the equipment from Accra when we arrived in Ghana - with the help of Bernard, we picked up the equipment from the Taylor Woodrow/Taysec depot in Accra who had kindly shipped it out for me – signed a few forms and hey presto was all ours!














Donating the tennis equipment made the work of collecting and appealing all worth it. Arriving at the Tennis Academy at the National Sports College in Winneba, a small coastal town in the Eastern Region of Ghana west of the capital Accra, we met Coah Noah and the National Junior Squad (coolest bunch of dudes ever) who had very little to work with so it was great for us volunteers to be able to say ‘here have 400 balls instead of 20’. We also donated a ball basket and cones so the players could have some structured drills aswell as being able to set up the tennis court using the equipment to give private lessons and conduct ‘International Tennis Number Assessments’ which is a test to rank the players if they wanted to compete.






















We gave the children some t-shirts and new shoes to replace the falling apart ones they were playing in and also giving children who were sharing a racket their very own one was a very rewarding to do. We taught them new games and were able to help improve their co-ordination with exercises using the sports equipment.






















Childs play.......hehe























































































































Ahhh Aunty...one of the very few chicks in Ghana who really play tennis and The One and Only Coach Noah - we used part of our project fee to pay for a locker to be built so he could keep all the donationsdonated equipment in......


Drills with the Junior National Squad....pretty good :P