{"id":7180,"date":"2012-02-11T08:18:20","date_gmt":"2012-02-11T08:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=7180"},"modified":"2012-02-11T08:18:20","modified_gmt":"2012-02-11T08:18:20","slug":"how-uk-based-charity-alive-kicking-helped-zambia-develop-the-stars-to-reach-the-african-cup-of-nations-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/02\/11\/how-uk-based-charity-alive-kicking-helped-zambia-develop-the-stars-to-reach-the-african-cup-of-nations-final\/","title":{"rendered":"How UK based charity Alive &#038; Kicking helped Zambia develop the stars to reach the African Cup of Nations final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/zambia-fc.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/zambia-fc.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"-\" width=\"660\" height=\"445\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7184\" \/><\/a>Zambia saw off African Cup of Nations favourites Ghana 1-0 on Wednesday to reach their first final in the continental tournament since 1994, with a UK based charity taking a small amount of credit for the team\u2019s success.<\/p>\n<p>Alive &#038; Kicking has supplied over 100,000 leather stitched balls to the country since 2004, with the social enterprise charity opening stitching factories in both Zambia and Kenya, helping to employ hundreds of local people.<br \/>\nOver the past eight years, hundreds of thousands of footballs which have been branded with HIV\/AIDs awareness messages have been given out free of charge to children across the region.<br \/>\nSughra Hussain, the Country Director of Alive &#038; Kicking Zambia, has spent over three years helping to develop the charities work across every province of the nation, and is delighted to have helped play a part in developing the countries footballing talent.<br \/>\nSpeaking at a recent Afcon event, Hussain said: \u201cSeeing the Copper Bullets in the final fills everyone at Alive &#038; Kicking Zambia with pride.<br \/>\n\u201cHaving made over 100,000 leather footballs in Lusaka, that have been played with across the country, we know that we\u2019ve played our part in creating the talent that has helped the Zambian national team develop into the effective force they are.\u201d<br \/>\nThe initiative has received the support of a number of famous faces, including former Arsenal star Emmanuel Eboue and even US President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne day I hope that the Africa Cup of Nations uses a ball that was handstitched in Africa by Alive &#038; Kicking,\u201d Hussain continued.<br \/>\n\u201cThe quality of the football at this tournament has been so high and is matched by the quality of the products that this continent can make for itself \u2013 just like Alive &#038; Kicking balls.\u201d<br \/>\nIn celebration of Zambia\u2019s Afcon success, with the Copper Bullets set to face Ivory Coast in Sunday\u2019s final, Alive &#038; Kicking have promised to donate 500 hand-stitched leather footballs to schools throughout the country in 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zambia saw off African Cup of Nations favourites Ghana 1-0 on Wednesday to reach their first final in the continental [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[328,1552,378,662,337,382],"class_list":["post-7180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-charity","tag-fc","tag-football","tag-help","tag-uk","tag-zambia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}