i am as impressed with your personal background as with what you've accomplished with the Nemato Rowing Club, Jan. It seems as if you've experienced much personal tragedy, but even that tragedy has become an occasion for you to bring about much good. Your young rowers have suffered in ways different from yours, but I suspect that your hardships and theirs provide common ground between you.

You note that you currently have twenty-three rowers and would like to see this grow to between fifty and seventy over the next few years. Of course, increasing numbers is one measure of success for any venture, but by itself is only a single--and incomplete--measure. Numbers attract attention and sometimes funding from the outside, but they don't always indicate the true impact of a program. Suppose you had to choose between deeply, positively affecting twenty-five rowers or marginally touching seventy-five? Which would be the better marker of success? I would say the former. None of this is intended to stop you from growing your program; it's simply meant to give you reason to congratulate yourself for what you've accomplished so far.

Steve Byars
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

Hi Amina,

About mall nutrition:

Some of our rowers got tested by the Eastern Cape Academy of Sport. The first response I got was: there are clear signs of mall nutrition. That is not surprising if you know that many families have less than 1000 Rand (100 Euro) per month to spend. That will not get you any close to a well balanced diet.

Funding is the major challenge to solve this problem. The Eastern Cape Academy of Sport might be able to support selected rowers and we are trying to get into a government feeding program. Progress is unfortunately slow.

It is clear that we will have to find a solution if we want our rowers to perform at top level. Any idea for funding or sponsoring is most welcome.

Regards, Jan

Hi Amina,
Your question about school results:
It is the end of the school year, summer holiday. I'll only get the school results when the rowers are back from holiday, so I don't know if we did well. We know that sport has a strong potential to improve school result, but I can't say confidently that it is happening in our group. I am looking into ways to offer structured support. Homework groups could be an option. We just have to find a way to organise it. We offer already extra English lessons.
The level of education in our township schools is poor. One school has a very low matric pass rates, the other school artificially creates a higher pass rate by only allowing the very best into grade 12.
We are working on two structural solutions:
1. We are working with an accredited service provider and the municipality to start offering learnerships: combined working and learning leading to a national diploma. For youth who will not make it to university, learnerships give much better job opportunities (useful practical skills) than matric. It looks very likely that we will get funding and can start the first learnerships in our township in 2008. We will start with 'sport leadership' learnerships that will offer our older rowers a career in coaching and club management. We want to offer a wide range of learnerships in future.
2. We are developing a sports academy. That requires a school that offers high quality education and offer flexibility for athletes to train. No local school can offer that. In cooperation with an existing school we want to start our own school, that offers quality and flexibility. By linking the school to top level sport (and arts, culture and science) we can create a different school vibe: one for top achievers. Then we will have a scale that will really change our township!
Regards, Jan

This sounds like such a wonderful project. I am interested to know the age group you are working with and what kind of effect it has had on their school work. I think it's fantastic to get these township youngsters into a sport which is, as you say, an elite sport. You mention malnutrition - and good nutrition is also a key element of success in sport - what can you do to deal with that side of things?
Well done!
Amina