TSG celebrate completion of Youth Ambassador training in Kenya

"Football as it's meant to be": This was the motto under which TSG, together with streetfootballworld, Bundesliga International, and Transforming Young Stars of Africa (TYSA), launched an 18-month training initiative in East Africa at the beginning of 2020. The first Bundesliga Youth Ambassadors (BUYAs) have now celebrated the completion of their training at a five-day event in the western Kenyan commercial city of Kitale. A total of 34 selected young men and women took part in the training programme, under the guidance of coaches from TSG's academy. In addition to football-specific content, it also communicated personal and social skills in order to playfully open up the way to a more self-determined life for the participants.

The BUYAs, as the participants between the ages of 18 and 25 call themselves, are active themselves as coaches and are involved in a variety of social and sports projects, with the goal of promoting development in their communities. The idea behind the initiative is to promote the already strong social awareness of the BUYAs and to use the global appeal of football to make a positive contribution towards the personal, social, and societal development of their areas. 

Maximilian Roth (U12s' Head Coach), who supervised the project together with Yannick Wöppel (TSG Football School), Melanie Fink (KPT Head Coach) and Tony Mamodaly (Head of TSG's Internationalisation), was extremely enthusiastic about the BUYAs' commitment: "The participants have developed enormously. The results, both in coaching on the pitch and in organising and promoting their own projects, were impressively evident again at the final workshop. George Springborg (Head of Network Development at Streetfootballworld), added: "They have become a solid group, inspired and supported by the amazing TSG team, and they have taken on a lot of social responsibility - especially in very difficult times in Kenya during the pandemic."

TSG pros Kasim Adams and Kevin Akpoguma get involved

In addition to many webinars and weekly video challenges, there were two special meetings for the BUYAs. The two TSG pros Kevin Akpoguma and Kasim Adams insisted on congratulating the participants personally through a video call. In exciting Q&A sessions, the two spoke about their careers and their greatest successes, but also about societal problems such as poverty and racism. The 26-year-old Akpogouma was also able to give the BUYAs another special message: "Hard work, gratitude, and humility are the keys to success. So enjoy every day and every minute of your lives because it is way too valuable to get angry about banalities. Try to be the best version of yourselves."

The initiative's closing ceremony was held last week in Kitale, Kenya. Under the supervision of the TSG team, the content of the training from the past year was refreshed and the development of the participants was closely evaluated in feedback rounds. Maximilian Roth was visibly pleased by his experience: "It was very important to us to be there in person again at the final workshop, as the entire project had suffered from the corona pandemic over recent months. Although we were also able to communicate all of the planned content virtually through online workshops, we were all the more pleased to be able to spend intense days with the whole group on and off the pitch again at the end." Melanie Fink added: "It was an amazingly great experience, which has also given us coaches many new ideas, impressions, and teachings that we will try to introduce and implement into our daily work at Hoffenheim."

More about the project and the BUYAs

If you want to find out more about the Bundesliga Youth Ambassadors and the project, you can visit the Bundesliga homepage.