Pretoria - A non-profit organization, which teaches young people life lessons through soccer strategies, has scooped the Global Sports Forum award for best Sport and Health programme.
Africaid's WhizzKids United received the award during a glittering ceremony held in Barcelona on Tuesday.
The organisation walked away with the award after being selected with other organisations in the Sport and Health category covering programmes in nine countries across Sub Saharan Africa.
Based in South Africa, Africaid's WhizzKids provides HIV prevention programmes, care, support and treatment to youth worldwide through the medium of football.
Currently, the organization runs it programmes in South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, Australia and the UK. To date 10 000 kids have been through the six-session life skills programme.
Elated Africaid CEO, Marcus McGilvray said the award was a testament to the hard work that has been put in across the organisation, from its trainers in the field to dedicated office staff.
"We are delighted to win this award as recognition of our programme, we hope that this award will help us spread the word of our programme and also give us a chance to network with like minded organisations to share best practice in the field.
He added that as an official implementing partner of FIFA's Football for Hope movement, the organization was looking to build on the excitement generated by the 2010 FIFA World Cup to put a further 10 000 children through its programme in 2010 and 150 000 by 2012.
In doing so we hope to prevent HIV in many of the youth we work with, McGilvray said.
To get more information on programmes run by Africaid, visit www.whizzkidsunited.org
