Brick by brick, FAM are moving into the right direction to sustainably transform the game for generations—Haiya

* The workshop is being facilitated by renowned football consultant Ashford Mamelodi from Botswana

* It is key to FAM administration’s focus to build capacity of our affiliates so that the game is transformed using a bottom-up approach

Maravi Express

At the opening of a two-day capacity building workshop for member associations (MAs) at Sunbird Nkopola in Mangochi, Football Association of Malawi (FAM) president said “brick by brick”, the governing body is “moving into the right direction to sustainably transform the game for generations”.

He added that the workshop is aimed at strengthening the operational deliverables to FAM’s broader strategic objective of transforming the game.

“This workshop — being facilitated by renowned football consultant Ashford Mamelodi from Botswana — is key to FAM administration’s focus to build capacity of our affiliates so that the game is transformed using a bottom up approach.

“The scope of the workshop covers a number of key elements of leadership and good governance where all executive committee members emanating from all the nine FAM affiliated bodies will have an opportunity to gain knowledge and understanding of modern leadership precepts for the benefit of our game  at the source.

“At the end of this workshop, our expectation is that MAs will be equipped with expertise to handle administrative and operational assignments with more focus on lifting up our game from the current level to the next.”

The workshop is a precursor to the 2024 FAM ordinary annual general meeting which will take place at the same venue this Saturday.

The workshop comes a week after FAM held similar workshops for district committees — a deliberate approach to building the capacity of its key internal stakeholders in its effort to transform the game in Malawi.

“These workshops are crucial for achieving effective results in the transforming the game agenda,” said FAM general secretary, Alfred Gunda. “When we talk about transforming the game, it has to be a bottom-up approach and not top down.

“This is why after working with districts last week were now progressing with Regional and National MAs. For a long time, we have elected leaders for this committees, but we have not oriented them or given them any training on what is expected of them.

“But now we need well capacitated administrators at district level who should be talking the same language of our bigger picture at the top level. If the districts understand the agenda, it will be easy to implement it across the board.”

Meanwhile, the 2024 FAM Districts Football Leagues will be launched on Saturday June 29 at Mangochi Stadium in Mangochi, which be be presided over by Haiya — to be spiced up by a ceremonial match between Lutende FC and Galaxy FC.

FAM competitions & communications director, Gomezgani Zakazaka said they are excited with the return of the Districts Leagues which have been revised in line with the transforming the game strategy.

“There are exciting changes in the competition which will be unveiled by the President at the launch,” he said. “This is a huge commitment that we are geared to continue developing rural football and transform the game as we strive to put in place a cross-cutting agenda of bottom-up in order to develop raw talented player.”

The launch of the leagues comes barely a week after FAM trained district football committees on football management functions among others competition management which will be vital in the effective running of the leagues.—Reporting by Fam.mw; editing by Maravi Express