Follow us at www.afrikit.co.uk or www.twitter.com/afrikit Every year, football clubs will introduce a new kit for the start of the new season. Out of the 20 clubs that participate in the English Premier League, 18 of those clubs have had a new home kit each season for the last 3 years. Football shirts are a commodity that go out of date at an incredible rate and the majority of these "out of date"
shirts are hidden in the deepest darkest depths of your wardrobes never to be seen again. It is not just replica club shirts, but also many amateur league teams will change their kit once every two seasons on average, leaving a whole kit that will be never used again. At Afrikit, we want to give your football shirts and kits new life by sending them to some of the poorest parts of Africa in order to spread the joy of football, and for them to feel the buzz that we do when we put a football shirt on. Afrikit is a charity that originated from five friends who study at the University of Sheffield back in October 2009. We all have an intense passion for football as well as helping others, and as a result Afrikit was born. The inspiration for Afrikit came from a close friend of ours whom recently visited a desperately poor village in rural Kenya on a Geography field trip and, he could not believe their obsession with the beautiful game. He arrived wearing a Manchester United Shirt, and was immediately surrounded by local kids and adults in the village. However, despite their great knowledge and interest in the game, he noticed that very few kids owned football shirts of their own. This story inspired us to try and recreate that buzz and excitement, by giving kids and adults the opportunity to own their own football shirts and become the footballers they dream of being. Why Donate Your Shirts to Afrikit? To Provide Fun- ultimately, football provides people with that fun factor, that indescribable buzz. We can all remember a time when we put on our teams football shirt and pretended to be our favourite player, or the joy we got from playing for our local Sunday League team. To Galvanise Communities - football can become the glue in even the most fragmented of communities. A simple gesture such as donating your unused football shirt can bring communities back together again. To Help Educate - we use donated shirts to entice people to break social barriers and to be educated, so as they can lead a better tomorrow. It is incredible to think how football and a simple gesture as offering a football shirt can be so influential. We work with charities that educate and provide awareness to people about HIV and AIDS, and who save lives through their work via the power of football.
