Football is one of DIA’s co-founder Richard Wilson’s passions, and he felt it was imperative to start a proper football league in the Chiawa chiefdom. It started in 2008 when over 52 school and village teams were fully kitted out and supplied with nets and balls. Tournaments were held throughout the villages and to this day the league is run annually.
We are now in our 8th season and still this is one of our most successful projects. The school teams are organized by the schools themselves which have a number of tournaments throughout the year at different venues. We assist where we can, mostly with transport and food at the tournaments which tend to run over a couple of days. As for the village league, this is wholly controlled by DIA. We have a local football league committee and they decide at the annual AGM what the prizes will be for that years league and cup winners which we provide. More importantly, they decide what conservation issue the teams agree to undertake as this is a requirement for all teams in order to be eligible to play in our league. For the upcoming season of 2017, it has been decided that each team will be responsible for building and maintaining a garbage pit in their respective villages. DIA will conduct random inspections and if a team defaults on their obligation points will be deducted.