This is the fourth of four blogs introducing the team that will be running the second ever kicking Off tournament in Ghana at the end of October 2017. "I'm not sure how it's going to work entirely yet and it's a very slow moving project as I'm dead busy getting drunk and running Tough Mudder races and incredibly poor, however, right from day one I need some slick branding like logos and stuff*". This was one part of the long rambly email I received in May 2016 asking me to ge

This is the third of four blogs introducing the team that will be running the second ever kicking Off tournament in Ghana at the end of October 2017. I guess you could say my involvement with Kicking Off began as the official sounding board, pretty much from the day Julian got back from Ghana, after his first trip in 2010. He had the seed of an idea, even then, and it has grown, gradually, until now, when it is really beginning to bear fruit. As his mum, I have been the liste

This is the second of four blogs introducing the team that will be running the second ever kicking Off tournament in Ghana at the end of October 2017. I'm Amanda, Julian's second cousin. Or cousin once removed?… I'm not really sure, but we are family, somehow! Anyway, for a while, we rather lost touch, as I was travelling and working in Australia, and he was busy in London. Except for news on the family grapevine, we didn’t see each other until last year when we arranged to m

This is the first of four blogs introducing the team that will be running the second ever kicking Off tournament in Ghana at the end of October 2017. As a Portsmouth lad, born by the sea, I have always loved to travel, and spent some of my earliest years living in Singapore. My dad was in the Navy – and I followed, more or less, in his footsteps, as a merchant navy officer. I have also been a football fan all my life (Play up Pompey!), so am really happy to be part of the sec

In the last blog, ‘Alive and Kicking Off’, I mentioned that the Kicking Off cogs are now turning on two levels: first, preparing for our next trip to Ghana, at the end of October; and second, establishing our business plan – so that we are in a position to begin approaching businesses for support. This blog will focus on the first of these and what we are planning to achieve at our second Kicking Off tournament. The major question I faced when planning this second trip was ho

Well… what an interesting six months it has been since we touched down in the UK from our first successful trip to Ghana, West Africa, at the end of March. It has been quite a journey, from the start to Kicking Off’s current position, and the exciting thing is that the journey is still just beginning. Many of my blogs have mentioned the people around me that have made Kicking Off possible – if I’m totally honest it’s they who make everything happen and have helped me to move

This is the Sixth in a series of Blogs that will go through, in detail, what our first ever project achieved, how we set it up, who we worked with, problems we faced, lessons we learned, personal memories and more. With a hugely successful football competition unfolding, under the watchful eyes of Ellis and Mr Ozaki, the rest of the Kicking Off team were busy with the other, incredibly important things we were aiming to provide on tournament day. Arguably, the most important

This is the fifth in a series of Blogs that will go through, in detail, what our first ever project achieved, how we set it up, who we worked with, problems we faced, lessons we learned, personal memories and more. To start this blog, I’d like to say thank goodness for Mr Ozaki, the match official for our Mpraeso tournaments. With the scene set perfectly for our first ever tournament to begin, there erupted one of the biggest rows I have ever seen at a children’s sporting eve

This is the fourth in a series of Blogs that will go through, in detail, what our first ever project achieved, how we set it up, who we worked with, problems we faced, lessons we learned, personal memories and more. The day had finally come: from drunken ideas in Canada to a dusty football pitch in the middle of Africa. Everything had been leading up to that 6am start, and heading down to the pitch to set up the stadium for tournament day. The tournament was a coming together

This is the second in a series of Blogs that will go through in detail what our first ever project achieved, how we set it up, who we worked with, problems we faced, lessons we learned, personal memories and more. As I sit on a nice relaxing weekend break in Amsterdam, I’m able to take some time and reflect from a position of comfort, with Stroop Waffles to hand on the way the team and myself lived in Ghana, and hopefully give out some ‘life saving’ survival tips for anyone l