Founded in 1999, EduSport is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that utilises sport  and education to help young people. As one of the first NGOs in Zambia it has grown in strength and scope and has developed worldwide partnerships with other national organisations such as NORAD (Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation, www.norad.no  ) and UKSport .

 

 

Its founder, Oscar Mwaanga, grew up in a rural suburb of Lusaka (Zambia’s capital) and qualified as a teacher. Throughout his work in schools, he recognised the ability, inspiration and energy young people can provide to community development. So he fostered a ‘peer leader’ approach through which young people would gain valuable leadership skills and develop their sporting talent by being responsible for organising local teams.

The key to the success of EduSport lies in the organisation's ethos. Most people in Zambia live in communities and these include many thousands of ‘unofficial’ housing developments. EduSport’s peer leaders are encouraged to mobilise their teams to assist in their community’s development. This help may take the simple form of cleaning areas to create more playing fields for the community or of helping elders with basic chores (EduSport’s Green Sport programme ).
 
However, the core of the organisation's objective is helping to stem the AIDS/HIV pandemic, which is a widespread problem across Africa . This is achieved by integrating health/awareness information into games for young people in the communities. Many of the young people are unable to afford to attend school so literacy levels are low but more problematic is the lack of availability of information advising the community how to protect against diseases such as HIV, cholera and malaria. So, when peer leaders run activities that are free for everyone, they include games that put across information many young people would not otherwise have knowledge of.