You might have heard that Zimbabwe’s national soccer team has its travel expenses paid for by a prophet, time and time again. You might also have heard that the team had to take a punishing 10 hour bus trip to Malawi for a match which, surprisingly, they won. You might even have seen the sorry blanket picture above of the team’s coach, Calisto Pasuwa which is starting to go viral. Yes, things are in a sorry state.
But instead of leaving all the work to prophets a Zimbabwean is using the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe raise money for the team. USA based Freeman Chari has started a crowdfunding campaign to pay the players and the tech team that represented Zimbabwe on the Malawi trip.
Called the “Zimbabwe Soccer Blanket Challenge“, the campaign’s message is:
The players have not been paid any bonuses from previous matches. To make matters worse their bonus is a paltry $65 each. The coach Calisto Pasuwa has not been paid anything despite leading the young warriors to the All Africa games finals in Congo, or beating Swaziland in Olympic qualifiers.
There are many times that the soccer team has given us something to smile about in a depressed economy and it is important that we show our support.
Seeing one of biggest soccer problems in the country is corruption we asked Chari how he intends to distribute the money. He says he has the list of players who went to Malawi and that when the campaign reachs its target he’ll make sure each one of them gets his share by Moneygram, Western Union or any other preferred method. “The point is,” he said, “the money should reach the intended targets without passing through other third parties that may be unable to account for it!”
In under 2 days, the campaign had already raised $260! If you were wondering how to help the national team without having the money lining big shot pockets, maybe this is the way!
If the name Freeman Chari rings a bell, it’s probably from his startup we reported on a year ago here.