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Hi All,
my name is Susanne and I am a 45 year old German lady who got into boxing 3 years ago. It turned out that this is a kind of cardio exercise I really enjoy and when I moved to Sierra Leone boxing actually changed my life.
In late 2023 I was having a boxing session with coach Foday, the former boxing national coach of Sierra Leone at my house when I was getting exhausted and definitely needed a longer break between the rounds than the 1 minute break Foday was announcing.
Usually I asked Foday about his previous senior boxers and boxing tournaments in Europe to get a longer break but this time I asked him if he also worked with kids...and boom, his eyes were sparkling!
We did not train anymore on that day but started the idea to start a Kids Boxing Academy in Sierra Leone.
A few days later we found a suitable building which needed some renovation in Rokel, a poor suburb in the East of the capital Freetown. We started with 8 students and have grown continuously in a rapid way. We are now 172 kids from 2-15 years who come regular to our boxing academy which has transformed to a fantastic place where kids train and also play.
Our theme is No Homework - No Boxing! And the concept has been proven, from first term to third term of the school year 79.5% of the kids have improved their results. We work close with the schools of Rokel together and have also started an IT center with computers and free internet access for our kids to prepare them for future.
While we celebrated the good school results of our kids earlier with some awards for all kids it also became clear how difficult it is for some parents to bring up funds to send their kids to school and equip them with school uniforms. And this is where you come in!
With the fundraiser we would like to support all our kids to have a set of new school uniforms for the next school year. Our kids go to 15 different schools and fees are different across the schools but in average the costs for a set of school uniforms are 12 Euro.
A full Kindergarten or school year for kids is in average 48 Euro.
With the current set-up of the boxing academy the costs per child per month are 6 Euro, this includes costs for coach and rent (6 times a week training) , water and academy shirt. Total expenses per child per year are 72 Euros
As of now we are starting to organise passports for our talents to be able to send them to qualification tournaments for Youth Olympics.
For more information please contact me or click here to see how much our kids have improved their boxing skills in such short time. Our big dream but also realistic target are the youth Olympics 2026 in Senegal
Plenty Tenki,
Susanne
Organizer
