The Lyons Family Join Us For Team Talk

Team Talk is a fun and educational project that uses Tag Rugby and educational workshops to directly improve the lives of young girls and boys, enabling them to play a fuller role in the family and the wider community.

The principles of Tag Rugby provide us with the ideal framework from which to explore communication and goal setting. For the children participating, the ability to work as a team within the game can be related to their future and education and the importance of supporting each other in school life.

The Tournament provides a vibrant and exciting end to the week with a chance to achieve their goal of scoring tries, reaching the semi-finals or perhaps even winning the tournament!

In July this year, Team Talk visited Sasaab (The Samburu community) for the fourth time since the program started in 2011. Many of the children in Westgate come from families where Maa is the only language spoken at home and the schools are not strict about encouraging the children to speak out of the vernacular in school.

We have found that one of the biggest hurdles that students graduating from primary school and entering into secondary school face, is their ability to speak English. One of the additional goals of this week is to help the students with their English understanding and encourage them to speak English confidently.

By the final day most of the students had mastered the Tag Rugby – the offside rule and backward passing provided a bit more of a challenge, but I think having the group of young leaders who worked with Ronnie, did help their team members to pick up the game more quickly.

We were thrilled to be joined by The Lyons family for the tournament on the final day – they watched a couple of games before taking part in a friendly match! The competitive spirit in all the students was evident, with Leopards and Warthogs fighting hard for first and second position.