The Tesfa Children Tournament initiative started in 2003

Tesfa has for several years been involved in arranging football tournaments for children and youth in Asmara. These initiatives were occasional and ad hoc in the first couple of years.  In 2003, however, Tesfa and the Norwegian Association of the Disabled (NAD) agreed to join forces to arrange a children’s football tournament with involvement of the disabled in several key aspects of the football organization. The arrangement worked very well and to the satisfaction of all concerned. By the end of 2003 children’s teams were playing every Saturday at four centers in different parts of Asmara. Tesfa’s players and disabled people from the Denden Camp cooperated on the organization of the tournament, and these arrangements have continued from 2004 until today.

Tesfa has also, in addition to running the standard Asmara leagues, implemented other activities related to youth football and involvement of disabled people. These include expanding the children’s football activities into three large villages and small towns, arranging two end-of-season weekend tournaments with out-of-Asmara teams participating, attending international events, building up friendship club arrangements with a Norwegian team, trying to get our own football field and facilities in Asmara, generating interest in the club among potential supporters and planning training courses. We are also generally seeking to develop Tesfa into a broad ranging sports club rather than exclusively a men’s football team of national quality, although good results from our main team is still an important goal for the club.

The leagues are also well acknowledged within the wider football community, as they are the only mass sports training alternative for children, and several of the other established football clubs in Asmara recruit their players among those who today play in the Tesfa league.

The involvement of the disabled as team leaders and tournament organizers has been easy and has worked well. Many more of the disabled than the 70 we have enlisted would have liked to join the league, so they are now waiting lists. The disabled are genuinely interested working with us, and they have much to give the young. They do good work as administrators and active team leaders. Petrol shortages made attendance among the disabled more difficult towards the end of the year, as the disabled travel on motorized tricycles, but somehow they still manage to find petrol and drive off from their camps and into the sports fields on Saturday/Sunday mornings.

Challenges for the tournament

We do of course encounter problems and challenges when running an enterprise like the Tesfa Children’s League. Some of the challenges are summarized below:

• Capacity and fundraising is the major concern. Many teams that would have liked to participate are turned away
• The tournament is largely a male enterprise both among the players and on the team leader side, and this is a second concern. Tesfa continuously seeks to do something about the lack of girls’ involvement, as it is not permissible to exclude girls and segregate children at play
• It is very difficult to find suitable football fields for playing games, and playing conditions at one or two of the playing centers are neither fit nor equipped for the purpose. Surprisingly, though, there are few injuries. Eritrean children are used to rough conditions and rocks on the field
• The good running of the league depends heavily on the active involvement of a handful of already busy people
• The administrative side of the tournaments is always a concern, but at the 1st of June 2007 Tesfa got their own office and store at the stadium. At the beginning there was no access to electricity, but the problem has now been solved