2025-02-25-accounts

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Reference Information

Name: Sports for Sustainable Development Foundation Status: Charitable Incorporated Organisation Charity Registration Number: 1198407 Company Registration Number: CE028720 Principal Office Address: 9 Violette Szabo House, London SE27 9RU Website: www.ssdf.org.uk Telephone Contact: 07931212953 Trustees: Ibrahim Sesay, Veronica Munetsi, Kadijah Sesay Banker: Lloyds Bank

Annual reports 2025

Chair Introduction

It is my privilege to share this annual report, which marks the completion of three impactful years in international development. Since 2023, our operations have focused sharply on the prevention and relief of poverty in Sierra Leone. This document provides clear insight into our current engagements and the tangible difference being made in line with our objectives.

Our strategy is built on a robust foundation: enabling self-sufficiency through targeted support in education, healthcare, sports, and other capacity-building interventions for children, young, disadvantaged people, and their community at large. In the past year, we innovated our approach by using football as a powerful platform for youth empowerment within the Freetown community and the Koya chiefdom.

We are proud to report that this inclusive mechanism is successfully putting young, disadvantaged people at the centre of their own development. By shaping their at udes and behaviours, we are cultivating active partners in community change.

While sports remain a vital platform for initial engagement, our strategy for 2026 and beyond is to leverage this foundation to introduce a holistic suite of programs designed to create deeper, more sustainable community impact. We are committed to incorporating these key activities into our operational framework. Our immediate action plan is to expand our skills training programs, moving beyond traditional sports education to include vocational workshops in carpentry, tailoring, business enterprise development, and basic IT literacy. This will directly enable individuals to generate a sustainable income.

Furthermore, to strengthen our commitment to gender equality, we will implement robust, organization-wide gender-sensitization training and launch specific mentorship programs aimed at empowering young women within our communities. We will also strengthen local infrastructure through targeted capacity-building workshops, research, and by providing community leaders and youth with essential training and resources.

Our funding history demonstrates a strong foundation of support. In 2023, we received our first funding of £4,000, football equipment, and learning resources. We used these to establish the “Superstars Academy,” which has 60 beneficiaries, and "Community Outreach Support" activities with 100 beneficiaries. In 2024, we received £6,350 to cover the cost of charitable items we shipped to Sierra Leone and facilitate our activities. In 2025, we received the sum of £6,500, which we used to extend our activities to other parts of Sierra Leone.

The total amount received from 2023-2025 is a substantial £16,850, showcasing consistent donor confidence in our mission.

Mission & Objectives

Our Mission:

To prevent and relieve poverty and financial hardship in Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Uganda by providing essential support through sports, education, training, and healthcare projects. Our goal is to enable individuals to generate sustainable incomes and become self-sufficient members of their communities.

Our Approach & Public Benefit:

These objectives were created in consultation with the Charity Commission UK, with consideration given to the Commission's guidance on public benefit. Our current work and engagements are helping many young people and their communities in Sierra Leone. We look forward to replicating our projects and activities in other regions within Sierra Leone and the other countries listed in our governing documents.

Our approach is a capacity-building intervention that primarily uses sports as an initial engagement platform. We focus specific attention on disadvantaged communities, children, and young people to enhance their social responsibility. By empowering youth to lead positive social and economic reform, we help them make a tangible difference in their communities and inform and influence policies toward their development and well-being.

Our initial project activities began in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and will be replicated in our other target regional areas as outlined in our governing documents.

Main Activities:

Sports: Our “Superstars Academy” currently engages 60 children (males and females) between the ages of 9 and 13 in physical exercise (football), in a safe place, with qualified coaches and adequate football equipment. This program includes feeding components as part of good nutrition, helps boost mood, reduces stress, and acts as a protective factor against crime, violence, drug and substance abuse, thereby enhancing overall physical and mental well-being through our sports-specific interventions, using football as a platform.

Community Outreach Activities: Our regular community outreach activities support approximately 650 hard-to-reach children and young people in urban slums, including those living with disabilities. We provide clothing support to children in orphanages, supply local community schools with learning resources and football equipment, and use “Social Prescribing” to support mental well-being.

Social Prescribing Approach: The Social Prescribing approach is a key factor we use in connecting with various community stakeholders, hard-to-reach children, and disadvantaged young people who are not part of the academy and are at risk of isolation, violence, drug, and substance abuse, and experiencing socioeconomic inequalities such as financial and mental health challenges.

Physical exercise (Football): Engaging communities in our “Social Prescribing” approach, we frequently organize Inter-Community Football Gala competitions for these hard-to-reach children

and young people, including those living with disabilities, to improve their physical health and mental well-being, provide access to outdoor space for social interaction/cohesion, and provide a regular supply of football equipment to over 50 local community football teams, which include 650 children and young disadvantaged people living in the urban slum, including women/girls between the ages of 14-26 years.

Advocacy: promoting equality education, including gender, health, and income distribution, and advancing the collective goal of a fair and just society, also promotes the relevancy of the Sustainable Development Goals, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the role of young, disadvantaged people and their communities in achieving these goals.

SDGs: Sustainable Development Goals relevant to our project objectives: Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty, Goal 2: Quality Education, Goal 3: Promote Equality and Empower Women, Goal 5: Improve Mental Health, Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability, and Goal 8: Develop Global Partnership.

Capacity-building intervention:

Workshop: The workshop activity was specifically designed for Youth Leaders from various community-based organisations in Freetown including men, women, and people living with disabilities, with the aim to promote participatory youth-led production of knowledge, designed with the ability to identify problems and find solutions to key questions related to the theme of the workshop, to arrive at a collective decision, with an innovative solution to enhance the development and well-being of disadvantaged young people, and their communities at large.

Theme of workshops:

a) What are the factors leading to youth violence, including electoral violence, and other forms of offline, online violence, and drug, and substance abuse amongst disadvantaged young people?
b) What strategies can be used to prevent young people from online and offline violence and drug abuse?
c) What and how can young people and their communities, contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for achieving these goals?

The direct actions and feedback from the participatory interactive group discussion are as follows:

Voice-Out: Participants expressed their views, regarding the underlying questions of the group discussions, and aggregated some of the root causes of youth violence, particularly electoral violence, including online and offline violence with reference to gender-based-violence, and influencing policy, decision-making, raising civic awareness, research to understand the issues in detail, and advocating for young people development and wellbeing.

Step-Up: Participants elaborated on the need to create opportunities for young people as an entry point to be involved and enable them to express their voice, influence processes and outcomes, and engage in further research opportunities to understand the context of the development and wellbeing of young people from a broader perspective and empower them to take the lead, supporting themselves and their communities towards socio-economic development.

Extension of activities:

We are currently working with young, disadvantaged people at the Makoi Community in the Koya Chiefdom, supporting local schools with learning resources and clothing, providing football

equipment, and assisting in the construction and facilitation of the Makoi Healthcare Centre. Funding is needed to facilitate our program in this region and beyond. We are also planning to engage in providing clean drinking water and involving young people in agriculture for income-generating activities.

Data Justification and Impacts:

We believe in accountability and clarity. Our data demonstrates that our interventions successfully reach a substantial number of disadvantaged young people across Sierra Leone through targeted sports engagement and vital community outreach programs.

Total Beneficiaries Reached (2023-2025): 710+ Young People Annually

The following chart breaks down our impact across our two core program areas:

Program Area - Sub-Program/Activity - Number of Beneficiaries Target Demographics Sports (Academy ) - "Superstars Academy" - 60 Males & Females (ages 9-13)

Community Outreach - Social Prescribing / Inter-Community Galas - 650 Hard-to-reach, urban slum youth, people with disabilities, young women/girls (ages 14-26)

Total Reach 710+

1. The "Superstars Academy" (N=60)

This program provides a structured, safe environment for 60 children aged 9 to 13. By engaging them in organized football with qualified coaches and proper equipment, we are actively implementing a proven protective factor against crime, violence, and substance abuse. The structured nature of the academy allows for consistent monitoring of physical and mental well-being outcomes for this specific, core group.

2. Community Outreach & Social Prescribing (N=650)

Our outreach strategy is designed to capture the hard-to-reach population who fall outside the structure of the academy. This robust number accounts for participants in:

Inter-Community Football Galas: Frequent events that provide access to safe outdoor space and social cohesion for vulnerable groups.

Direct Support to Local Teams: We supply equipment to over 50 local community teams, directly impacting approximately 650 individuals who use these resources regularly.

Targeted Demographics: This includes those living with disabilities and young women/girls (ages 1426) who face acute socio-economic inequalities.

In Summary:

The 60 children in the academy represent our deep, intensive intervention model, while the 650 young people reached through outreach represent our broad, community-wide impact using "Social Prescribing" as a crucial engagement tool. This combined approach allows us to address poverty and hardship systematically at both an intensive and extensive level.

Governance

Status and Objects

The charity is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Our governing document is an adapted Constitution from the Charity Commission whose only voting members are its charity trustees. Our formal objective is set out in the section on Strategy & Plans on pages……

Governing Body and Structure

Our governing body is made up of a committee which is, the trustees of the charity. At present, we have three trustees, and strategic operational advisers who are specialists in all our areas of intervention.

We are gradually developing our structure to meet the growing demands of our activities/project and the relentless challenges of collaborating with disadvantaged communities at a cross-national level. All emerging issues of the charity are addressed at the regular monthly meetings, and we are in constant contact with all communities we are serving and stakeholders, including beneficiaries in Sierra Leone.

The Committee officially determines how it ascertained its roles before the completion of the charity registration and reviews this accordingly, when necessary. We are constantly monitoring our performances and duties, by conducting a regular review of our effectiveness as a charity, based on best practices within the third sector organisations.

We are well committed to making sure that the prime function of the charity embraces good governance, with a specific focus on policy and general strategy, approval of plans, monitoring of progress, and financial control.

Operational response

We continue to see our prime function as ensuring the good governance of the charity and to this end we focus on matters of policy and general strategy, the approval of plans, the monitoring of progress with charitable projects, and financial control.

Operational responsibility is delegated to the Programme Director. The Committee is assisted by the Chair who advises us on governance generally and acts as Treasurer in monitoring financial matters on our behalf.

Trustees

There were no changes during the year. When we recruit, we follow a well-established practice. We carry out a skills audit to identify the qualities sought in potential candidates, and a trustees’ working group manages the appointment process. It is our policy to provide the new trustees with structured induction that includes comprehensive documentation, individual briefings, and the opportunity to meet our supporters and volunteers.

Financial Review:

Our total Income for the year is £16,380.00.

Income & Expenditure

Over three years, we managed our expenditure by ourselves, and thanks to the financial support we received from only one donor, with the sum of £16,850. It would have not been possible to deliver our project activities without this support.