Question: what are you trying to achive when you visit the schools in Africa?

Helen O'Connor answered on 22 Jun 2011:

Hi – in South Africa they don’t have many opportunities to learn new tihngs – often they learn by ‘memorising’ from the blackboard, they dont do any sport in school, they get hit by their teacher, then they often have no parents or are abused at home. There is lots of crime and drugs and alcohol abuse too.

What I did when I worked out there was to run some ‘clubs’ where the children could speak about their problems and their lives – then we used topics from sport psychology to find ways of coping with their problems. So we talked about anger and how to control it, confidence, and how we can feel more confident, how to work in a group or as a team, how to set goals to achieve what you want from life etc. All of these things are topics I use with athletes – but these are things that can be helpful in the rest of our lives too, even if we dont do sport.