Greetings everyone! As you will already know, Friends of Pakati are due to have a stall at the Scunthorpe United FC Community Day on 22nd March, as the Iron host felliw title-challengers Chester FC: https://friendsofpakati.com/2025/02/22/community-day-sufc/
We have, thanks to our generous podcast host Bradley Mell, a great raffle prize on the day!
This is a framed football shirt, signed by the players of the 2010/2011 season.
On the Open Day we attended in July 2024 (see pictures below), a similar shirt raised a large part of our funds on the day, over £100 out of the £160 we received.
We are hoping for another successful day, selling merchandise (see pictures below), raffle tickets, & accepting any donations, be they in cash or via http://paypal.me/friendsofpakati plus any donated football shirts.
The football team I have supported & followed since I was a small boy is, as you will already know, called Scunthorpe United. It is nicknamed ‘The Iron’ because of the Iron & Steelworks which dominate the town in many ways.
This included either reading the football scores in the Guardian Weekly or listening to the sports bulletins on BBC World Service when I worked in Zimbabwe (1989-1991) and in Botswana (1995-1997).
As you will already know, I taught at Pakati Secondary school in Zimbabwe, and following a return visit in 2018, I started Friends of Pakati soon afterwards.
In the years since then, my two passions have joined together many times, largely thanks to the generosity of people connected to the football club. This includes a great number of Iron fans who have supported us in different ways, plus many people who work for the club, including a past Chairman, owners, managers, board members, backroom staff, mascots, programme & raffle ticket sellers, not to forget local media organisations & politicians who have regularly shared our social media presence.
Myself, and all at both Pakati schools & the local community, are very grateful for the support, and all appreciate the continued efforts to help👏👏👏
The club have a Community Day each season, with teduced prices, invitations to local youth & grassroots community football clubs, tickets for military personnel, and usually a mixture of stalls for fans to visit & chat with.
It will likely have a variety of stalls including supporters groups such as the Iron Trust, Iron Bru, Iron Hour, maybe local community groups, military stalls, food stalls, voluntary organisations as well as the club shop. Friends of Pakati will be there too, just as we were on the Open Day back in July 2024.
Club joint owner/board member Ian Sharp visits our stall at the Open Day in 2024
As previously, we will be selling merchandise to boost our funds, and we will also have donated items for raffle /sale/auction. Already there is a signed framed shirt promised from the 2011/12 season, and the club have promised some small items too.
We are also looking for football shirt donations to either sell or auction, similar to what we were given back in 2019…
…we will accept shirts of ANY team. I will be at the game on the 8th March & you can donate to Friends of Pakati then, or even on the Community Day. Please email us at friendsofpakati@gmail.com if you want to post any shirts to me.
We will have a collection bucket on the day for cash donations, but our two main fundraising pages are always open…
Hi everyone, welcome to our latest podcast, courtesy of our regular host & Friend of Pakati, Bradley Mell.
We discuss podcasts that are coming up & future fundraising events. Have a listen & let us know what you think! friendsofpakati@gmail.com
We welcome new guests onto the podcast, so if you have a connection to Pakati schools or Friends of Pakati in general, and want to appear on a podcast, please let us know!
We spoke for over an hour just recently, and covered a lot of ground as we caught up with each others adventures – mine in Zimbabwe for Friends of Pakati, Sharlom’s in Eswatini as a volunteer for Challenge Ministries. We also talked about our current plans – mine to raise funds for power & wifi at Pakati, hers to start a new project in Zimbabwe – this will be part of a series of podcasts/vlogs we are planning to record soon.
Sharlom is a Specialist Biomedical Scientist at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford. Here is the outline of her story….
Sharlom at Bulembu Christian Academy
“Hi Chris, I hope you are doing well today. I will be sending some pictures shortly,I thought it’d be nice to include some pictures of my recent trip to Eswatini with the students that I worked with as well as a few individual ones of my self….. I will also attach an article that I did for the Institute of Biomedical Sciences to give context to my work in Eswatini.”
Giving a Science lesson at Bulembu
Below is the article she mentioned that she had published:
Clearly the time spent in Bulembu has left an impression on her, & she has enjoyed working with the students….
….so much so that she sent me the following:
“Hey Chris, I just checked and the photos I sent earlier cover most of my journey. I also wanted to share some pictures from our 10k run at Alton Towers with my work colleagues last November. We did it to raise funds for Challenge Ministries Eswatini.”
With her new project currently being set up, Friends of Pakati will be following her progress, and she will feature in future posts, including the aforementioned podcasts/vlogs.
Many thanks to Sharlom for her continued support & great encouragement to help keep Friends of Pakati going!
It has been a while since I last spoke with her, and we have had a good long catch-up. She continues to donate regularly – please let me know if you can also do that – and clearly intends to do so for the foreseeable future.
We discussed what Friends of Pakati have been doing, which she was delighted to keep up with as we delivered the 20 computers to Pakati schools in 2024. She asked about our current plans & I spoke about our fundraising need for power & wi-fi this year.
Sharlom also talked about her own plans, as she is starting up her own project – this will be what the next blog will be about. It is very likely we will have a podcast/vlog to add to our growing collection too!
So please keep an eye out over the coming weekend…
The school has a regular donation of porridge to provide for all students. Local parents often volunteer to cook & dispense the porridge.
Volunteers who came for porridge cooking
Students back in class seem keen to learn, something that is very noticeable every time I have visited the school.
The students take a break during lunchtimes, and some may go home if they live nearby. Most stay in the school grounds, as you can see below:
We at Friends of Pakati are striving to raise the funds we need to help both Pakati schools, to get them connected to power supplies & to the internet.
We really appreciate anything you can do to support our efforts – donations, sponsorship, buying merchandise, liking & sharing across social media platforms – so please do keep it up!
Greetings everyone! Welcome to the second blog of 2025.
As we now have some targets to meet, I thought it best to update you on the state of our finances. I have created a new Page where this information will continue to be updated on a regular basis, see current details below:
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Back in September 2024, Friends of Pakati used up all its resources, including donations, but it was not enough. In order to make sure the IT was sent to Zimbabwe, the Author had to top up the funds.
So we started again from £0.00 on 30/09/2024.
Since then, we have had the following donations & running totals:
02/01/2025. £10.00. £111.28
02/01/2025. £37.20 £101.28
02/01/2025 £10.00. £64.08
02/12/2024. £10.00. £54.08
01/11/2024. £10.00. £44.08
07/10/2024. £14.08. £34.08
01/10/2024. £10.00. £20.00
01/10/2024. £10.00. £10.00
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What delights me has been the immediate responses to our efforts to fundraise towards our targets for this year:
The first is to get power to the two Pakati schools, at a cost of £785/US$1000
The second is to get Wi-fi to both Pakati schools, at a cost of £846/US$1078
So a huge THANK YOU to those who have donated already towards the total showing above in our bank account.
Friends of Pakati is going to be more active this year, so please do get involved with us, support us, follow us, and share our output on social media to help spread the word! Thank you 👏👏👏
Greetings everyone, and let us wish you all a very Happy New Year!!
Today we release the 3rd podcast in the series of 3. Each one is just a part of the blog post it is part of.
Podcast host Bradley Mell & myself can be heard discussing a number of things, including the immediate priorities for Friends of Pakati in 2025
Brad & Chris in 2022
Following what for me personally was a successful 2024, I am looking forward very much to next year! Friends of Pakati have had an upturn in fortunes due to the second half of the year, when we took 20 computers to Pakati.
2024 over 30% improvement on 2023
We have had praise from the local councillor for Ward 14 after our visit in October, Mr Njenje sent me this message just a couple of days ago:
Councillor Njenje, 3rd from the left holding a monitor, as I handed over a computer to the Schools
“My humble greatful thanks to Friends of Pakati with all that support you are giving to the entire community, all the efforts you are making its a calling….. I thank you once more… 2024 was a challenging year but you made it worthwhile by giving us computers. Hoping that 2025 will be smoother for everyone!🙏🏾🙏🏾”
Behind the scenes, we have a number of things being planned, including individual events with a surprise or two 🫰 plus some Iron-related items. We have hopefully something lined up in mid January – details available when we get things in place.
We are approaching a number of people for help/support/sponsorship too, so keep looking out for what happens!
There are going to be some changes on the website, particularly the pages, as we need to update things a bit. Also, our social media presence will be expanded as we seek to attract more visitors & views to the website.
As a result of the above, we are looking for new guests to appear on our podcasts & vlogs. Former staff or students of Pakati, people who have donated to Friends of Pakati, or have helped us in some way, even those who are interested in what we do – please let us know if you would like to appear.
So, for us here at Friends of Pakati, there is much to do & look forward to this new year of 2025. Let’s get started!
Well, this is an unusual departure for Friends of Pakati…. but I did think it was an interesting idea. We may do other different things in the future too!
Bradley Mell, our podcast host, suggested we discuss the TV programme Grand Tour who visited Zimbabwe in 2023. They recorded what is their final ‘special’ called ‘One for the Road’.
Apparently, the presenters – Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond & James May – had wanted to go to Zimbabwe for many years but were unable to. The negotiations to get permission to film will have been detailed, as it will have included some of the stunts they did during the recording.
As you listen to the podcast, below are some of the photos I took of the TV screen during the programme, with information about each photo.
The road through the tea-growing area of the Honde Valley, one of many scenery changes mentioned during the broadcastClarkson & May arrive into HarareThe amazing dancing traffic policeman in HarareThe huge marketplace known as Mbare Musikawhere Clarkson & May found the exact exhaust needed by HammondMay, Hammond & Clarkson enjoy the beautiful Jacaranda trees during their drive through HarareFabulous view at Mana Pools National Park as the sun goes downHammond drifting at Mana Pools close to the ZambeziPart of the road to Kariba town &Lake KaribaThe Grand Tour presenters stayed at the internationally famous Victoria Falls Hotel The 3 have their cars on the rail tracks on the Victoria Falls Bridge between Zambia & ZimbabweJust a small part of the genuinely awesome Victoria Falls Finally, as they head towards the Botswana border, they appear to be driving through partsof, or close to Hwange NationalPark
A very enjoyable programme for me, recognising many elements of the journey they made across the country as places I have been to.
Coming next: Part 3 of 3
The final blog & podcast of 2024 is all about Friends of Pakati in the coming months, trying to raise funds for the schools to be able to make the most of our IT donations in October. If you can, please donate here:
Hello Everyone – A warm welcome to the Friends of Pakati Review of 2024!
Friends of Pakati at the Iron Open Day in July 2024, l to r:Jane, Brad, Chris, Brian & Simon
Well, 2024 has been what sports teams often call ‘a game of two halves’! The first 6 months had quite a few interesting elements to it, as you can read about here…
… but it was definitely much better in the second half of the year. Our statistics at the end of June showed we were heading for a lower number of views than even 2023, our lowest so far since we started. How things have changed since then!
What really made the difference was our stall at the Scunthorpe United off-season event – the Iron Open Day. Our stall (see the photo at the top of this post) at the event turned out initially as a decent fundraiser, netting us £160. Read all about it here:
Unbeknownst to us, one of the visitors to our stall was one of our fellow Iron fans, Sarah Dent. She contacted me, and went on to say she might be able to help with some computers for Pakati…
As I was planning to go to Pakati in October, Sarah’s intervention made us speed things up so that we could deliver new IT to the two schools.
I went to see the company Sarah works for & met some of her colleagues who were involved with the promised IT. Have a read here & find out what happened:
This led to a speeding up of certain things, as we had a deadline to meet – my upcoming trip to Zimbabwe. We needed to get the promised IT checked out, packaged up & sent to the shippers, called Coedma Freight International Ltd baeed in Leicester.
From there, we got the IT donated to Zimbabwe, and delivered it to Pakati schools. Below are a number of posts which take us through the process, and how it all went:
There are further posts about IT lessons, Primary students visiting Robert Mugabe International Airport, my own images & videos, and the sad loss of our friend Pastor Aggie Fombo recently.
