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Lionsraw - Charity Trip to South Africa
Back to News & ViewsRecently, Gemini Director, Gary Metcalf visited Durban in South Africa as part of his support for the Charity Lionsraw.
Lionsraw’s vision was conceived in the Stadium of Light in Lisbon in the summer of 2004 by Jon Burns. Jon wondered how many of the 60,000 fans in the stadium shared both a passion for the beautiful game and a belief that this passion could be used to change lives. He wondered what great things could be achieved if it were possible to harness that passion and belief.
This vision has since developed from its roots in the North East of England into a global movement of fans who share the same vision.
Gary says "This was my 4th visit to Durban in South Africa. The charity I help support ‘lionsraw’ has built a primary school in the ‘valley of the thousand hills’. In April 2020 we had planned to take 100 volunteers to help build a school hall to hold 700 pupils. Due to the pandemic this trip had to be postponed.
Lionsraw add " We do however, have a small team of local builders to assist with our projects and so this trip was to see how the building works had progressed and also see the feeding programme that we support.
The school hall framework is complete and we plan to build the walls once the situation with the restrictions are lifted. The school hall is also currently acting as a sports facility.
We have also continued to help build a technical high school which currently has four classrooms, two for science, one for design and technology and one for domestic science. This has given the children their first real insight into these subjects.
We are currently building two more classrooms for academic subjects and our aim for the next six months is to put the foundations down for a further two classrooms and create a sports field. The children have no sports facilities at this school. This will allow them to benefit from being part of a team and just generally letting off some steam. It’s hard to believe that this is one of the most complex challenges due to extreme gradient on the land and a mixture of clay, mud and rock. We will need to hire heavy machinery and a qualified operator for this.
This will leave us with space to build a further four classrooms. The schools have been extremely well supported not financially as there are no funds locally but in every other way by the local community.
We are unsure if we will be able to deliver the original intended trip of 100 volunteers that unfortunately we had to postpone 10 days prior to the trip. We do however believe that we may be able to do a number of smaller groups whilst the restrictions are in place. It’s amazing how much we have been able to deliver given these difficult circumstances but we are absolutely determined that this project will be delivered as intended and our team remains fully committed."
Gary concludes "The work that Lionsraw do has been inspirational to me and being able to help, in any way, has been truly rewarding. I would urge anyone with the opportunity to support this wonderful charity, to do so - its such an amazing cause"