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radio personality Kevin Fine has a big heart and it is evident in various
initiatives he is involved in, aimed at bringing joy to South Africans. Whether
its starting book projects that deliver millions of rand worth of books to
children or running programs aimed at encouraging children to play sport, Kevin
is passionate about injecting positivity into South Africa.
In 1996,
along with two friends, Kevin launched the Little Champs Sports Academy, which aims
to be the provider of physical activity programs for all children between 2-7
years old across Africa. Over a decade later, Little
Champs reaches out to about 7000 kids a week, 50% of which are girls, and its
allowed Kevin and his team to bring a lot of corporate role players into the
market place.
In order to
bring the programme to life, a character that symbolized all that Little Champs
stood for was needed. No one was more qualified to select this character than
the children themselves. And so the Legend of Charlie Champ was born.
What’s
really impressive about the Little Champs Sports Academy is that along with
teaching children concepts required to be applied in competitive sport, it also
communicates sporting concepts like sharing, the concepts of team work, team
building, of being the leader, and of being the follower.
As we
celebrate athletics as our sport of choice on gsport this February, we’re proud
to introduce you to an initiative that has the potential to change our
attitudes towards sport and help build sporting icons that generations to come
will look up to.
Kevin spoke to gsport about the vision of Little Champs, how the Academy functions, and why
he sees sport as a vehicle to build a more positive South Africa.
Kevin, when was the Little Champs Sports
Academy launched?
Officially
launched in 1996 after friends and I decided two things: One was that we were
watching a lot of kids become involved in sport where they weren’t really
capable of playing competitive sport yet, so they didn’t have a grasp of the
concepts required to be applied in competitive sport and we thought that was a
bad start for kids.
The second
idea was that we were seeing a lot of kids being forced into sports that they
really didn’t want to play. It was a case of because mom did netball, daughter
would do netball, or because dad played soccer, then son would play soccer. So
we thought, hold on a second, why don’t we give kids exposure to the skills and
let them have a choice as to what sport they would like to play? That was the
basic foundation of why the idea came about.
How has the initiative evolved since it launched?
It’s turned
into a bit of a monster…laughs! What it evolved into was a life skills program
where we started looking at ways of communicating sporting concepts to very
young kids. For those who have kids they’ll know to train your child to play
any kind of sport or to be active is very difficult.
Trying to
explain to them the concepts that you understand of … simple concepts of
throwing, catching, kicking… we just expect kids to be able to do it, then of
course when kids can then parents say that my kid is a physical activity
genius. The fact of the matter is that it requires some serious paradigm shifts
(sorry to use such a big word) but the bottom line is a lot of parents don’t
realise that their child doesn’t really grasp those concepts; they’re able to
copy them, but aren’t able to fully understand these skills.
What we have
done is give it to them in bite-sized components where we turn sports equipment
into a magical world, or we create ways of teaching the kids to do the
activities without them really knowing that they’re learning the foundation of
cricket, or swimming, or gymnastics, then that’s where the successes come from.
The other
evolution of the program was that we didn’t just want to focus on one specific
sport, so we looked at 12 sports, after we first focused on soccer. We looked
at the requirements of each sport and we worked on ways to get the most basic
components of each of those sports into our program.
The first
thing we had to come up with and we did this with the University of
Johannesburg was that we came up with five core components to all of the sports
that we wanted to base the program on. So the five core components were speed,
agility, balance, spatial awareness, eye-hand/eye-foot co-ordination. Those
components are required to participate successfully in any sport.
As we
started defining and refining the kind of program we wanted to do, the program
started evolving into a more complete program for kids. Then we started adding
cognitive components like sharing, the concepts of team work, team building, of
being the leader, of being the follower. So we started to build in all the good
ideas that come from sport.
Tell us about the programs currently run and how
they’re being received?
The way that
we initially thought about it has changed dramatically. We started as a
commercial operation and then decided that we wanted it to be a mass
participation program and therefore took it into the Corporate Social
Investment space. That has taken us to about 7000 kids a week, 50% of which are
girls, and what it’s allowed us to do is bring a lot of corporate role players
into the market place.
The programs
run on a weekly basis. We identify a suitable environment where kids can do
physical activity, whether it’s in Katlehong, in Kwa Tema, in Duduza, or in
Alexandra. We try and get the kids there once a week for an hour where we now
do a physical activity and literacy program for the kids. We’ve built in a
literacy component which allows to us interact with kids in such a fun space
that they’re starting to learn to identify letters, recognise them, pronounce
them, and associate them with other characters. We’re using sport really as a
social platform there as well.
It’s been
quite a trend across all schools we’ve been to, whether its in Limpopo or Gugulethu; the kids know when Little Champs
day is. They don’t know whether its Monday or Tuesday but Little Champs day is
a day they know they have to be at school. Little Champs is pushing itself into
being a health and wellness brand for children. Not only are we trying to
implement physical activity programs, we’re now trying to provide product that
help kids become more healthy.
We’re
looking at bringing in Pilates programs – a lot of kids struggle with
occupational therapy issues, ADD, and ADHD. We’re looking at developing a water
product for kids, proceeds of which will go into our Section 21 Company which
makes it possible for us to train in places likes Soweto. We’re taking it from just being a
life skills program for kids, into being a lifestyle and health and wellness
brand for children, which adults identify with as something that is healthy for
their kids.
Our promise
has always been that we will provide you with a quality product that will
improve the quality of your kid’s life. We’ve finally got evidence now from
research at the Sports Science Institute that the program shows marked
improvement for kids who use the program as opposed to kids who don’t. We
finally have documented research that puts us at a significantly different
level to any other sports programs for kids in the country.
What have been some of the highlights over the past
decade?
We created a
TV show which was a dream of ours with SABC and we got Rama to come on board.
What we did was, we created 26 episodes of teaching kids at home to watch the
show, interact, and get active. We now want to take this idea to DVD and to the
international market.
We also took
the concept to 8 provinces where we had The Good Start Games. We had about 10
000 kids per event with really amazing partners on board and celebrities to
drive the idea of kids being physically active.
Being
associated with the Laureus Foundation has been an honour and a privilege. To
be associated with 43 of the world’s greatest sports people, names that are
synonymous with greatness, has been incredible.
Little Champs programs run on a weekly basis in a suitable environment where children can participate in physical activity.
From a
personal point of view, a lot of the highlights have been parents coming to me
10 years later after their kids had started our program saying "you can’t
believe the difference your program has made in my child’s life". It’s a
genuinely happy space and environment – that is a consistent highlight wherever
we go. Those are successes you can’t document, these are emotional successes.
How is this initiative funded?
We fund it
in several ways, we have several corporate partners, and we are now starting to
create cause-related marketing platforms where we run programs by creating
products that fund our Section 21 Company. The other way is through commercial
funding where our PTY company actually funds a lot of our Section 21 company.
What we’re
trying to create is an environment where we’re not that reliant on corporate
funding but we’ve created an environment where there is enough product (whether
its through merchandising, TV, or DVD sales) in the marketplace to create a
sustainable income model to make it viable for these programs to continue.
The second
model we’ve created is the "Train the Trainers" program which ABI have gotten
involved with this year where we’re about to train hundreds of teachers and
give them a NQF (National Qualification Framework) Certificate that says they
are now trained to apply early childhood development coaching techniques. So,
those models or revenue streams are how we fund the business.
What is the long-term vision of Little Champs?
Our long
term vision continues to be, since 1999, to be the provider of physical activity
programs for all kids across, not only South
Africa, but Africa. We
see so many good programs on paper but on the ground are very poorly
implemented.
We want to be a natural provider to government, Sport and
Recreation, Social Development, to the health and wellness sphere, to the whole
country. From a delivery point of view we want to be that partner to government
and we believe we have the skills, and I think it’s a very important role. Its
definitely one of our aims.
From a
commercial point of view we’d obviously love to have our Charlie Champ
character on shelves competing with Barney. Charlie Champ is a South African
icon for kids that represent health and wellness. Charlie is an icon for young
children who want to achieve and be winners and feel like champions themselves.
Another
level we are moving into is a space where we are starting to design sports
spaces for commercial development. We have such an extensive range of knowledge
that we now want to help developers create environments where sport is possible
for kids to play. Not only do we want to be involved in the planning phase, we
then want to be able to provide the actual servicing of those areas with sports
expertise to run programs for kids.
What
drives your passion to help people?
It’s a hard
one to answer… Part of who I am is being a positive South African.
My desire is
to take the positivity and apply it in different spaces, whether it is on the
radio, or whether it be within the Little Champs space, or starting book
projects that deliver millions of rand worth of books to children. I am
desirous to see positivity injected into South Africa. There is no way we
can expect South Africa
to find its feet unless we start with the youngest of the young.
How can people get in touch with Little Champs?
Postal
Address: Little Champs
Sports Academy
(Pty)
Limited
POST NET SUITE 544
PRIVATE BAG
X9
BENMORE
2010
Tel: (2711)
722 7372 | Fax: 086 508
0235 | Email: [email protected] | Website: www.littlechamps.co.za
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