Sky News Tuesday are rporting that the billions generated by the World Cup will leave no lasting legacy for grassroots football in South Africa. In evidence thereof they are citing the founder of one inner-city Cape Town club.

In truth they would have been better off speaking to the South African Rugby Legends Association whose executive summary is set out in full below.

This association has been expanded to include all sports including Football.

Their best bet is to get hold off tough-as-teak SARLA CEO John Allan the former Springbok and Scottish hooker (last dual nationality international).

Sustainable Legacy Initiative

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The word Legacy is being bandied about hysterically in conjunction with the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa. Whilst this is noble and funders from all nooks and crannies are keen to avail money, it is the opinion of SARLA that these moneys could best be used to create a “Sustainable Legacy” by building facilities, multi-sports related, that can be used as a catalyst to introduce life and skills enhancement programs in communities that need them most.

To do this SARLA will combine all its programs and house them in facilities built by our developers in conjunction with TigerTurf, an artificial sports surface manufacturer.
This will give the SARLA “Sustainable Legacy Precinct” (SLP) an edge over anyone else looking to do the same as SARLA as ours will include physical SAPS presence in our solution. This means that we can solve many issues and break down a number of current inadequacies.

Through every SLP we will:

•provide social upliftment in disadvantaged communities
•re-energise involvement in sport within these communities
•re-establish working relationships between SAPS and the communities
•enable skills development facilities
•create employment opportunities
•provide a pool for talent identification by sporting codes
•provide a measurable solution for funders in respect of BBBEE, SDL and CSI

General Program Description

Mission Statement:

To create a sustainable matrix of mixed sport facilities throughout the disadvantaged communities within Southern Africa to facilitate the upskilling of these communities using sport as the catalyst.

Vision Statement

To provide the opportunity for organisations to create self-supporting facilities that accelerate the transformation of disadvantaged South Africans by combining the disciplines of sport, education and life orientation and job creation from a single facility that is community based and community owned.

Description

This program is a facilitation process combining all the SARLA initiatives and associations to create self-sustaining sport precincts, called “Legacy Parks”. The effectiveness of this program is measured in terms of the community involvement in both the sports offered and the social and personal development initiatives. We aim to combine the construction of two (2) twenty Five by forty four meter (25x44m) TigerTurf venues, with a clubhouse cum classroom structure and a SAPS Contact Point at a cost to company/sponsor of R3.5Million. The facility will employ a league manager to control the franchised “Soccer 5’s” and “Tag Rugby” models that create a revenue stream to maintain the facility and its resources. The classroom is the center of skills development of multiple disciplines, including, HIV/AIDS awareness, Drug awareness, Crime prevention, Adult literacy etc.

The target market for funding includes both National & International Corporate sponsors, Local and National Professional Sporting Clubs, Local and National Government, the SAPS and Educational institutions.

SARLA is in the business of social development through sport, which is definitely a growth industry in South Africa and with the advent of the 2010 Soccer World Cup and the Political stance on CSI and BBBEE, this program is poised to be the perfect delivery vehicle for all concerned to highlight true and measurable involvement. This initiative has the ability to make tangible differences in the lives of the recipients of it benefits.
Company history: The South African Rugby Legends Association (SARLA), a Section 21 Company with NPO status, has been in operation for nine (9) years. SARLA is a group of former Springbok and first class rugby players who, in 2002, formed a charitable trust. Initially, the express purpose of the Trust was to raise funds for the development of rugby at grass roots and at Club levels, thus providing a vehicle for the ex-players to put something back into rugby, today we are a full blown charity focusing mainly on helping all sports and people thru our social awareness programs.

Long term: The long term plan is use these SLPs to form a network/matrix of benefit centres. This provides a communication platform to reach and touch the disadvantaged communities. These SLPs will provide a sustainable legacy platform and community asset to be showcased leading up to the 2010 Soccer World Cup and for ongoing skills and social development beyond 2010.

Phase two of each SLP will occur after 5 years when the current funder will be offered the first right of refusal to continue with the facility, which will include the cost of replacing of the TigerTurf.

The factors that give us the competitive advantage is our leverage capability through our network of associates, viz. SAPS, Rugby and sporting Unions, Legends Associations, Life Orientation Organisations. Through this single facility we are able to provide access to disadvantaged and transformable communities to all of these associations, while at the same time facilitating meaning change mechanisms.

We are able to help sporting codes with:

•Enabling REAL grass roots development in their respective codes
•upgrading skills levels in their respective codes
•talent identification from non-traditional sources
•meeting transformation charter requirements
•growing interest in their sporting code to create supporters for ticket sales and merchandising, both current and future markets

We are able to help National and Local Government Departments:

•Entrench themselves in the communities in which they serve; be it crime prevention, law enforcement, primary health care, or education (both literacy-type and skills development)
•Create employment opportunities from within the local community
•Realise a measurable return for resource investment

We are able to help Life orientation organisations:

•provide permanent homes for their programs
•measure the success rate of their programs, grow and adapt them to suit market requirements
•show measurable results to their funders in other areas

We are able to provide funders with

•Physical presence within disadvantaged communities
•Provide credible presence for their CSI spend
•Provide value for BBEEE ratings
•Provide value for skills development returns
•Demonstrable physical presence to market their social involvement
•Creating potential markets
•Growing future employees

We have 3 types of Legacy Park models:

a)Within a retail complex – this is the “Show Pony” for corporate to see and from a commercial perspective will be less challenging.
b)Within a township and in close proximity to both Primary and High Schools i.e. Mitchell’s Plain, Protea Glen, Tembisa, Khayelitsha etc.
c)Rural Legacy Parks where we link with Agri Park (see below) and use sport as a catalyst to bring the villagers together to trade etc.


AGRI PARKS

Agri Park is an innovative new empowerment project which aims to create hundreds of long-term agri-sector jobs.

The main purpose of the Agri Park is to build a sustainable community-owned model for small and large scale vegetable production and processing. Other project objectives are as follows:

•Assess baseline information and needs of the communities
•Formation of co-operatives or relevant legal entities
•Establishment of seedling nursery, gardens and processing units – the Agripark value adding chain
•Contribute toward eradication of extreme poverty and employment creation
•Create an enabling environment for the development of agribusiness entrepreneurs
•Contribute towards human resource development e.g. skills development and sustainable utilization of resources.

The process starts with the manufacturing of seeds which are then planted, maintained, harvested, cooked, dried and packaged ready for distribution.

This whole process provides jobs and income for a community as well as the end product which is used to feed the community members.

In linking with Forte Hare University who are the brains and operational part of the Agri Park, their students will help the local farmers produce good vegetables. These farmers will participate in village leagues on our Legacy Parks and will bring with them their produce which we will purchase for our processing plants. Every day we will make soup packages to feed on average 20 000 kids within a 50km radius as part of the government feeding scheme and transport to the different schools by the local taxi’s. The remaining packaged vegetables will be sold to retailers whereby the profits will be used to sustain the Agri and Legacy Parks. Sport will be used as the catalyst to draw the kids during the day and the villagers at night.