Cycling Whole Life Coaching for @Risk African Kids

Standing in a time of diversity

At this point in time, I think most people are quite fed-up with the realities and parameters of the COVID 19 limitations which we all have to deal with. It’s a testing time for most people and even if it just means having to adjust to new norms and realities, we are all tested in our ability to adapt and our resilience to make the most of what this adverse time throws at us.

For the Cycling Whole Life Coaching program it’s been no different. Besides the direct realities we’ve had to deal with during the pandemic, we’ve recently had our second case of theft this year at our bicycle storage facility. It seems like the criminals have seen this lockdown period as the prime opportunity to execute their criminal activities. We’ve stepped up our security system quite a bit with a CCTV installation and backup power supply, since the thieves are quite clever to come during stormy weather when the power has also been eliminated. Along with some other measures, we hope this will be enough to prevent further problems of this nature and also offer helpful evidence to the police in case something does happen.

One the front of our program with the kids, we’ve had an exciting time since starting with activities after the hard lockdown period. The kids missed the riding so much, they came in large numbers to rejoin the training rides. We had to be strict with the age group training times to not run into the problem of not having enough bicycles available for those attending. We also had a few running days, which was mostly due to the bicycle theft and we needed to first sort out the damage and the insurance before resuming the riding. The kids also enjoy running though and it is sometimes combined with a swim in the nearby river pools.

During the recent school holidays, we ran a holiday program for all the children attending the aftercare. There we over fifty children attending here and they had such fun. One of the activities – a treasure hunt, ended up being quite a challenge, but the kids would not give up before they could find all the hidden treasure. Like all our activities, each of these also had a lesson through experiential learning. Who ever thought learning could be so much fun…

The last weekend in October, we took the committed boys, 13 years and older, on a journey-into-manhood camp. For the boys group, teaching them about authentic manhood, has been a focus of the program from the beginning. After all the male facilitators and coaches on the program completed “The World Needs a Father” course, we were even more inspired to be extra intentional about this journey for the boys – boys becoming authentic men. It’s even called “The Journey” in “The World Needs a Father” package. This year, one of these men, was very committed to the quality of the process, since he has a great passion it. We’ve been having sessions with them since February of this year. After the camp was postponed due to the COVID 19 lockdown, we finally were able to go on the weekend mentioned above. It was very challenging for the boys, but we were amazed at how well they could cope with the challenges and engage in the process, while implementing the values taught. These are the future leaders of our program and positive role models for the younger boys, even those in the community who are not part of the program.