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Sports Reporter
FORMER Dynamos midfielder Naison Muchekela and his colleagues recently received just the kind of boost they were looking for in their development of the game when financial institution Old Mutual partnered their Big Stuff Youth Soccer Academy.

The academy and Old Mutual hosted a maiden financial literacy programme for future junior football stars.

The academy for which Muchekela is one of the coaches is based in Emerald Hill at Innovate Gym grounds, a sporting facility housed within the Old Mutual Gardens.

They recruited boys and girls aged between five and 15 years from 63 primary school kids who participated in the programme.

Old Mutual used the opportunity to educate them on how to start a savings culture at an early age.

Project facilitator Pat Mubariki said the program was necessitated by tales of the continued “rise and fall of local soccer stars’’ most of whom hit hard times when their paying careers are over.

“The program is the first of its nature whereby children are tasked to think of a target that they want to achieve, something valuable they want to have in future and make a plan of saving towards it.

“Old Mutual will make follow ups on the program to confirm how many kids have met their targets and reward them, in line with their objective of enabling positive futures”, he said.

Mubariki said football is a very short career and needs disciplined saving habits hence starting with adults might not achieve results to everyone because of already adopted lifestyles.

“For the programme to work, the kids will need to be given refresher lessons at each stage of their lives. Second stage will involve those in the puberty stages of soccer, which will mostly have secondary school going players.

“The last stage will be the open (seniors) who will also have their program before they start first team football.

“There will also be financial counselling lined up for players going abroad and those heading for first senior contracts locally,’’ Mubariki said.

Former Air Zimbabwe Jets player Titus Sanangurai and Muchekela started the academy project in March last year and also have ex CAS United and Lengthens left back Ronald Sengu as an assistant coach.

Sanangurai said they were inspired by the work that Polish mentor Wieslaw Grabowski and his scout, the late Never Gombera, did in Chitingwiza.