By Leslie Koroma
I n the year 2000 the United Nations came up with a strategy to combat poverty and enhance social change around the world with what they dubbed the Millennium Development Goal( MDG). Among those MDG ' s, Sports was chosen as one of the vehicles to enhance development mostly in the third world. A very small number of people in Africa have heeded the call to visualize and value the use of sports as tool for development and social change in their communities. 13 years on and almost at the sunset of the UN Millennium Development Goals as a project by the
Elijah Kellie UN( the project expires in 2015), many Africans have yet to even understand how important sports is, as a social catalyst. Some still view it as just recreation, which in reality it truly is, but take a moment and look across the seas and you will see how many nations around the world have transcended their view of sports as just being a form of recreation and are using it today to create wealth and add much needed jobs to their economies.
Enter a son of Africa, Elijah Kellie of the UK; a Sierra Leonean born British Citizen who, without even a prior knowledge of the UN MDG ' s has been doing exactly what the UN prescribed in those MDG’ s 13 years ago, forming a Football Club that is registered as a second division team in Sierra Leone. A club whose primary motive is to use sports as a vehicle to help kids in Sierra Leone achieve their dreams of a better life by promoting education, health and at the same time give them an avenue to their sports dreams. I, Leslie Koroma, CEO and Managing Editor of African Sports Monthly, was able to talk to Elijah the Founder of FC Kellie and here is our conversation.
African Sports Monthly( ASM): Good morning and how are you?
Elijah Kellie: I am fine, thank you very much for giving me this interview.
ASM: You are welcome; you are one of the very few in recent years who have cared about seeing the growth of the game and the development of sports in Sierra Leone, what prompted you to start this football club?
Elijah Kellie: Basically growing up as a child, I remember seeing my parents helping out in the community tremendously, especially with the less fortunate children. I never knew the impact of what they were doing as child until 2006 when I went back to lay my old man to rest. I was overwhelmed
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