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Strengthening Families for Abandoned Children
FINALLY, after two years’ delay due to Covid, our Rugby Players’ tour to Rwanda was back on. A group of 17 volunteers led by Tina, one of our trustees, met at Heathrow airport to fly to Rwanda. RwandAir looked after the group really well – upgrading seats and allowing access to the lounge in Heathrow for free food and drink. Niall was delighted to be allowed into the cockpit! RwandAir had also given us additional bag allowance which meant the group brought an impressive 39 hold bags. Three other volunteers arrived on later flights so the total kit that was taken to Rwanda was around 900kg. Our group of 23 volunteer coaches, referees, players and trustees was ready to start!
There was a 2-day 7s tournament for both women’s and men’s teams sponsored by Big Ant. Great to see how rugby is developing in Rwanda. The standard was high and the tournament was won by Lion de Fer (men) and Ruhango Zebras (women). Big thank you to Rhino for providing the playing shirts for our two teams. Our 3 volunteer referees did a great job both refereeing and developing the skills of the Rwandan referees for the 54 matches that were played. Ieuan, one of our trustees, had arranged the tournament with the Rwanda Rugby Federation – great job! There was also an opportunity to give away some of the kit we had brought out with us.
After checking into the accommodation and breakfast, the group went to visit the Genocide memorial museum and then the Kinamba Project for some rugby and dancing!
We had hired a pitch for 5 days. Each day we had a group of 30 – 40 Rwandan rugby players (both men and women) including those who had been selected to play in the national team (the Silverbacks). We had morning and afternoon sessions to deliver a mixture of coaching and refereeing. There was also some opportunities to visit local schools and to work with Ernestine one of our RDOs who works with schools in Kigali.
We played a match- the Rwandan National team – the Silverbacks and our tourist team – Inshuti zu Rwanda (Friends of Rwanda). A very close game that ended 21-20 to the Silverbacks. They are the current holders of the Challenge Cup. Let’s see what next year brings… We finished the tour with a celebration dinner at Sole Luna. It had been a very busy and successful week. A huge thank you to all of our volunteers who joined us on the tour. Hope we didn’t tire you out too much! So much was achieved and we couldn’t do it without you. Carrying donated kit, training and coaching our RDOs and players, referee training and an opportunity to form lifelong friendships as well as playing in 7s tournament and a friendly international game against a World Rugby ranked team! We look forward to the next tour and hope we will have many volunteers sign up!
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