By Lucas Koehler, German Red Cross volunteer attached to URCS

I am 20 years old and I work as a volunteer at the Red Cross Branch in Mukono, Central Region. At the start of September 2011 my colleague Jana Weinberger and I came from Germany to support the work at the Uganda Red Cross Society. After I had been introduced to the basic duties at the Branch I came up with different ideas how to establish new features of the office to support and promote the vision of the organization.

Based on this train of thought I used my own personal skills to create the concept of a youth football team for the Branch. However, until I actually reached the point of finally creating this team, I had to take different steps, starting with community work in Namawojjolo.

Having met various students from Uganda Christian University that is situated almost next to the Red Cross Branch I was able to get in contact with many people that were and still are interested in football and youth work in general.

Consequently, these students were very interested in my projects. This led me to a junior team at JAG classic boarding school and a senior team in Namawojjolo. I started training both teams at the start of October last year. The perception of my work was very positive also because I based the work as a coach on everything I had learnt at the Red Cross office.

It was not only the fact that I introduced humanitarian work to the community but I also established unity among the villagers in Namawojjolo as the teams led to a mutual interest. Moreover, this work was done voluntarily. As some may have noticed, this work is based on various principles of the Red Cross Movement worldwide including: Humanity, Voluntary Work and Unity.

My work in Namawojjolo included weekly training and regular matches with the local senior team. As the work I was introducing to the community was initiated by ideas of the Red Cross office I organized a dissemination session at JAG classic boarding school. This session was based on URCS’ history and other interesting information on HIV/AIDS.

As a consequence, the players and the people in charge at the school were able to understand by what principles our youth work is guided and the various fields in which we work. Furthermore, we are about to establish an out of school link with the senior team in Namawojjolo.

This link will allow the players to have access to various features of the office, including First-Aid training and up-to-date information about our activities. The link to this team enables us to further spread our youth work and promote the work in the community.

After I gained more experience, I organized a meeting at the Red Cross office in Mukono to initiate the original project for the Branch with a representative of Red Cross Football Club for Mukono Branch. With the help of my colleagues Agaba, Jackie, Wamutu, James, Jana Weinberger and the Branch Manager Nkugwa George, we organized a meeting with about 20 potential football players from different schools around Mukono.

This way we were able to promote our work in large parts of Mukono. The training with the Red Cross Football Club was started with two meetings in which we illustrated our mission and vision for the project.

This phase of the project was very important to emphasize the fact that the team should be able to identify with the principles of the Uganda Red Cross Society.

After the first phase of the projects all the players applied for a Red Cross membership. Consequently, we reached exactly what we hoped to achieve: a youth team that can enjoy mutual interests on the basis of our work in the Red Cross society while educating the masses about HIV/AIDS.

All in all, I very much enjoyed initiating this youth project and I hope to successfully continue my work this year.