From Undy to Uganda
How we ended up arranging a live link up between a Welsh football team and an African orphanage.
“Just bear with us a minute, we’ve only got the one light we can move around and we just need to get everyone in.”
That’s a stunning enough comment on its own, but made even more surreal by the fact it was said during a Zoom call between a small village in south Wales and a smaller village in western Uganda, more than five hours from the capital, Kampala. It was also 11.30 at night their time.
We asked if they get to watch much football on tv. They said that, if they knew when a game was on, they would walk three miles to watch it.
We learned this while standing in a bar containing three TVs , all showing different sports.
Karl Luton from Undy AFC Zooming with Kafunjo Community Project in Uganda - Credit: EatSleep Media
This is why we love doing what we do at EatSleep Media. We stumble across great stories like a village team in the second tier of Welsh football sending its old kit to help people in Africa.
How? When? Why? So many questions. So we asked them.
Undy Athletic Football Club has a charitable arm called Undy Boots. The idea is, if you’ve got an old pair of football boots not being used anymore, you can donate them to the club.
Someone looking for a pair of boots for a child which has grown out of their’s, say, can pay a fiver for those boots and the money goes to charity.
The money is used to support local causes, but when someone told them about the Kafunjo Community Project and their appeal for football kit, Undy decided to help out.
And that’s why, on a cold evening in Wales, there we were Zooming Uganda. Literally a sentence I never thought I’d write!
Technology and increased connectivity means of course that you can now reach virtually anywhere on earth, bringing us all so much closer together.
So I wasn’t surprised we could do this.
Wearing their donated Undy kit with pride. And looking pretty fine with it - Credit: Kafunjo Community Project
But for it to really work, you need buy-in and enthusiasm from the people you’re working with.
That’s what makes this particular video so special to us. Because the good people at Undy AFC and at Kafunjo totally got it and were excited to try something new and throw themselves completely into it.
That’s why we got a tour of the club, Soccer AM-style intros, tricks and even an appearance from Jurgen Klopp (sort of!)
And even with a grainy, occasionally freezing, single-bulb-lit village in Uganda, you can see how excited they were about it all. The reaction when they saw Jurgen (we broke it to them gently in the end), the reaction when they saw the changing rooms, the training sessions, everything. They loved every minute of it.
Zooming the breeze with Jürgen Klopp. Sort of! Credit: EatSleep Media
And a special mention to the players and first team coach at Undy who made a point of welcoming Kafunjo, making players available to talk through drills, show off their skills and generally muck about - all while they were supposed to be having a proper, serious training session.
Many clubs would’ve politely declined, paid lip service or barely registered what was going on. I was imagining turning up at training to be asked ‘what’s this all about then?’, but it didn’t happen.
Undy had made sure everyone there knew what was going on, they had briefed people beforehand and even picked out volunteers to mess around and show off on camera.
Watch the full FC Cymru show with Undy AFC and the Kafunjo Community Project here:
If I’m ever asked for an example of a small, media-friendly club going above and beyond in terms of its community cohesion and outreach, I will point them straight at Undy AFC. A cracking club with a huge heart.
Undy and Kafunjo Community Project will feature in this weekend’s FC Cymru which can be found on the Football Association of Wales’ Facebook and Youtube channels.
For more information about Undy AFC and Undy Boots, visit their Facebook page.
You can find out more about the Kafunjo Community Project here.