Out Of Africa
Contributed by: Wesley Hull Wednesday, June 18 2014 @ 09:06 pm ACST
The following article, written by Conor Walsh on the AFL website, looks at an upcoming Australian Rules football match between two African countries not usually seen mentioned Australian Rules football circles…until now. The work of Australian teacher, Tom Purcell, and his colleagues is changing that African landscape by degrees. Picture:Zimele."BARE feet and tattered boots speed across the dirt, dust is wiped from sweaty brows and boys hop over barbed-wire fences to retrieve the inflated leather that is an Australian football.
This is not in the Outback or on the hardy country football ground you may be imagining - this is in Embulbul, an outer suburb of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Why would young Kenyan boys be playing our gameω Because of Tom Purcell.
Purcell is a VCE teacher and House Head at St Kevin's College in Melbourne. In 2008 Purcell, who has eight children as well as two foster children from Nicaragua, founded Zimele, which runs in partnership with the Edmund Rice Foundation.
Zimele, which means "To stand on your own two feet", has since been the driving force of Purcell's life. Zimele has raised funds to support various outreach programs in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa and encourages people to recognise the wrongdoings of the world and walk with their African brothers and sisters."
To read the rest of this article, click this link to the AFL website[*1] :
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