How will your gift be used

The breadth of activity funded by Goal50 has grown considerably since the charity was established in 2010. It was the World Cup that kicked things off. Founder Nigel Pascoe is a big football fan and it was in between watching the England teams efforts to lift the trophy that he met and an came to admire the efforts of Mario van Niekerk. Mario is a former gang leader who had a life transforming moment in the year 2000. He recognised the futility of life on the street, gang violence and drugs. His solution was to focus on his passion and to take young guys with him. He set up a soccer academy called GCU. In no time at all, Mario recognised that these lads needed more that simply the beautiful game, they needed life skills and people around them who would support and encourage.

Mario's dream was to open an orphanage or safe house where young people could live in safety. After-school clubs, homework clubs, arts clubs, chess clubs, food programmes, sports activities, drug rehab. The charitabe work has grown out of recognition. 

Day Care Centre

At the heart of functioning community is the opportunity to build relationship by supporting and encouraging one another. In the growing township of Heideveld the demand for social and medical services cannot be met by the government. Goal50 is committed to introducing a Day Care Centre with a potential reach of 250 individuals each day. After long negotiations with government, Goal50 has been able to buy a parcel of land in a very busy area of the township. 

Safe House

When the soccer academy began in the year 2000 with the purpose of keeping lads off the street, Mario van Niekerk recognised that he could not offer safe accommodation. But it has always been his dream to open an orphanage or safe home. Nearly 20 years on, the age and gender of the abandoned children may have changed, but the need hasn't. So the shell of a building was bought in 2016 and after a transforming restoration and the development of a second storey, the first child was welcomed in 2017. 

Food Programme

Currently providing more than 120,000 hot meals in a year, the food programme has served several communities where the need has been. The initiative began in Heideveld and grew to take in the fastest growing and violent townships of Khayelitsha and Nyanga. Some people walk as far as six kilometres in very hot conditions to queue for what might be their family's only cooked meal in the course of a week. Goal50 believes that relationship-building is impossible on an empty stomach.

Ark Drug Rehab

Tucked out of the way just a few miles outside of Cape Town is an institution that comes to the rescue of hundreds of men. Many of these men are plagued by an addiction to drugs, they struggle to ‘make-it’ in society. Ark is not government funded and yet its success in transforming lives is the envy of many such rehab units. It is not uncommon for men to queue up outside the perimeter fences to await an available bed. And all of this is achieved on a shoestring budget supported by charitable gifts.

Hungry to Help

This initiative for restaurants, cafés and take-aways was born about of a burning desire to see people in the townships of the Cape Flats receive the most essential of provisions… food. It’s a simple mechanic in that eateries sign-up to a monthly standing order donation, 100% of which goes directly towards staple ingredients that help produce in excess of 120,000 meals a year.

Job creation

With unemployment in the townships running at 80% of the population, it can have a calamitous effect on the way that community functions. Goal50 approached local employment agencies to see where the charity might offer some help. One solution was to capitalise on the vast numbers of township people who were engaging with the food programme. Each week, hundreds queue for meals and this was used as the catalyst to screening individuals for skill-sets.

Elite scheme

2017 saw the first season of Heideveld Unite, a semi-professional club evolving from an amalgam of smaller football clubs in the township. It’s aim is to bring the community together under the one banner. It’s a team that plays to win, but not at all costs. The club holds to very clear principles and standards of play and there is an expectation that players will ‘gift’ their participation in some of the charitable programmes that Goal50 operates. This is an exciting, trailblazing activity that has already reaped rewards.