New perspectives for greater impact.
As a manager of a football club and a market survey associate, Kweku’s livelihoods were hugely impacted by the outbreak of the pandemic. He got introduced to the CoRe Programme and it has made a whole lot of difference in his life and the team he manages. The sessions on talent discovery gave him an entirely new perspective which he is applying to his football club.
I am Kweku Buah. I was with the Administrative unit of CoRe. I was managing my juvenile football team, TopBase Community Football Club, and working as a Market Survey Associate in a company when news of COVID-19 started making rounds in the world.
My team had just been visited by a scout who owned a football club in Europe in February 2020. He had selected four of my players on standby for European trials. COVID-19 put all these plans on hold. I was also in the final stages of registering with the Ghana Football Association. Again, because of COVID-19, we had to put all that on hold. We did not train from March to September 2020. Most of the boys lost interest and returned to their old lifestyles – the same social vices for which reason I formed the team to take them away from.
In terms of finances, my survey job was put on hold for obvious reasons – all bars, restaurants, night clubs, etc. were under lockdown. I had no income, but I was spending. A few of the boys in my team also looked up to me. Times were tough for me. Some of my friends who supported my team withdrew, either because they were also hard hit or for the fact that they knew we were not playing matches. That was when I got a call from Mrs. Ocran, upon the reference of a friend of mine. She asked if I would like to work on a social intervention project.
I agreed and joined the CoRe team. My thought processes and mentality changed from the very first day I attended one of their sessions. It was a training conference being held for the YIEDIE group executives at GIMPA. I was invited to observe and familiarize myself with the project. As I would later learn, they played specific videos from the e-learning episodes to participants as part of the CoRe in-person conferences.
I was privileged to listen to two episodes on, ‘Discovering your talent’ and ‘Doing business with your talent’. After listening to the teachings by Rev. Ocran in the 15-minute videos, I immediately had ideas on how to make some income. I had a snooker board in my living room which had been sitting idle. I started scouting for possible places that I could station it for people to play and pay.
I also built a table tennis table, I observed that there were a lot of kids at home at the time, and they would be interested in table tennis, so I designed a quite simple one. Because it was mobile, I could send it to different locations. I turned my passion for sports into a simple business.
Indirectly, I have employed two of my players to take care of the two boards, and I give them stipends every week. It was exciting because I was not only making some money but helping others as well.
As a football talent hunter, owner, and manager of a football team, I have learnt the key factors to discovering your talent. I have taught this subject to my boys. I know a lot of them joined the team for the love of football, and not that they are particularly talented. As a result, two of them have joined the Management team because they have discovered they have a hidden talent in organizing and coordinating.
To conclude, I would say that “information is ad infinitum” I thought I knew it all when it came to issues bordering on talents, but I learnt a great deal about it, and it is helping me run my football team. In one of the CoRe Hangout shows, discussing digital branding, I learnt how to look out for engagement triggers to engage with the people we would like to connect with in the social media and internet space.
With this cue, I started engaging with a professional footballer I needed to connect with. I keep commenting on his statuses on WhatsApp, till one day he wrote back. Today, he has promised to support my team with a set of jerseys and to visit and inspire the boys when he next comes to Ghana.
I believe the CoRe Programme should go beyond COVID-19 and enter into full time sensitization and engagement of the youth.