Updated August 08

Sore in the morning
Massive thanks to Simon Mathews and all those who supported him in his quest to win the London Triathlon. OK, so a few people finished in front of him, but for every wince of pain he felt, kids in Zambia will be smiling. Thanks fella - makes a massive difference. 

National football tournaments
How cool is this. Now we're not big ones for telling you about corporate events etc, but Steve (who works the phones at Bupa), has rallied together pretty much the whole company and is organizing a nationwide 5-aside tournament to raise funds. Events have already happened in Brighton and Manchester, with more to follow across the country. Great example of one person doing his bit and making a massive difference. 

Channel 4 documentary - to be repeated
Great news. The short documentary we made about The Great Football Giveaway's recent projects in Angola and Malawi, will repeat on More 4 on Friday 11 July, 8.30pm. Enjoy. Sure it will be on again if you miss it this time around..

Uganda - massive success
Our intrepid team of volunteers have just returned from Uganda. Headed up by Duncan with Beth, Ben, Lisa and Rick in support they travelled over 5,000km across some of the most rural parts of Uganda. They hand delivered over 3,000 footballs and netballs direct to the kids, so right now there's a whole load of smiling going on in Uganda. Great work guys and on behalf of everyone that's given a ball, thank you. Full report to follow, but in the meantime check some photos on our  Uganda gallery

Want to run a project?
The GFG is looking for volunteers to organise and run future projects. If you're thinking of taking a 4-6 month career break and are up for a brilliant  challenge, then this might be right up your street. We'll help you sort it, but this will involve fundraising, project management, putting a team together and hand-delivering the balls yourself to kids in some of the poorest countries of the world. Interested? Email us

Channel 4 documentary
Great news. A short documentary about The Great Football Giveaway's recent projects in Angola and Malawi, was on Channel 4 on New Year's Day. Click here for more info. What a great start to the year! This was all self funded and filmed by the volunteers (ie no charity money spent on it) and Channel 4 gave us a budget to finish it up. It's due to be repeated on More 4 soon, so if you didn't catch it first time round, then look out for it next time...

A new school for Malawi
Tanya, who helped us give away thousands of footballs in Malawi decided to go back in 2007 and build a school. How amazing is that!  The school is now open and we've pledged to help her out with anything sport related we can - building a sports field and / or funding a sports teacher! For more details and to support her visit Build Malawi

Brilliantly mad
Massive thank you to Glenn and Andi at Teambuk2cv, who are driving a battered old 2CV from UK to Mali, through Senegal & The Gambia, helping raise funds for The Great Football Giveaway. On their travels they will also be giving away some balls to the kids. Brilliant. 

The Atlantic Film Festival
The short (self funded) film we made from our project in Malawi has just been selected for showing at the 2007 Atlantic Film Festival in Canada. We're currently in the process of trying to re-edit the film to include some pretty extraordinary footage from Angola, which will make it even stronger. Once this is done the plan is to enter it into some UK festivals for broader viewing. If you want a DVD email us.

New Projects 2007/08
Having delivered a massively successful project in Angola, one of the toughest places in the world top pull something like this off, we know that we can make this work in any country in the world. Before the next World Cup we hope to run projects in up to six different countries. If you have recommendations for where we should go, then let us know. 

Angola - an extraordinary project
The Great Football Giveaway has just returned from delivering over 3,000 footballs & handballs to children in Angola. The project was a huge success and if you want to read more about it click here. One thing is certain, Angola may be a troubled country with some serious issues to overcome, but for now there are a whole load of very happy kids there. Great work & thanks to everyone involved.

And we're off
Our team of volunteers are making their way out to Angola right now (June 2007). They have over 3,000 balls to give away and will be spending the next month going to some of Angola most rural and least accessible areas. If anyone wants to contact them to see how they're getting on, they can be reached on an Angolan mobile +244 926 347000 - this will only work sporadically when they are near a city, but won't work when out in the rural parts. 

We have just filled our container with over 3,000 footballs & handballs, so a huge thank you to everyone who's given us a ball (all your names should be in the Supporters section - shout if not). All balls given as of 8 June 2007 will now go towards one of our future projects (we currently have one planned for South America, another in India and more in Africa - watch this space) so please do continue to give balls. More the merrier.

Footballs for Senegal
Andy, who also helped us give away balls in Malawi has recently got back from Senegal, where he gave away a load more footballs to the kids out there. He's now setting up a project in Edinburgh to raise awareness in schools of the education issues faced by children in Senegal.  Good man.

Film Screening

3,000 Footballs & netballs given away in Malawi
What an extraordinary experience. Thank you to every individual that donated a ball for us to give to a kid out in Malawi. 

90 FA Cup balls in 90 minutes
We started giving out the balls in Malawi on 13 May at 3pm, as the whistle went  for the start of the FA Cup final. We gave away 90 FA Cup replica balls to 90 children in 90 minutes, to kick off the campaign. 

What a start!
We've barely launched and we've already shipped our first container load of thousands of balls! But we still want more...

Media coverage
We had lots of interest from the media before we set off for Malawi, which was been a great help. 
To watch/listen/read see below:
BBC News 
- click here  
The Times 
- click here
World Service 
- click here ("Listen to Fast Track" 
starts 48min 20secs in) 
BBC Radio London 
- click here
Evening Standard 
- click here

England signed ball - Raffle
To see if you've won the Mitre match ball signed for us by the England team, click here. This was open to anyone that came to our launch party or has bought 10 or more balls.

Launch Party
What a great night! Thank you to everyone that came along and bought balls. Thanks also to Adam St club for hosting the evening.