Shaun Bartlett continued his involvement with the SuperSport Lets Play campaign, which encourages kids around South Africa to participate in sport by informing kids around the country as to where and when they can participate in various sporting, activates.

Bartlett first teamed with the Let’s Play project in March when Supersport and Unicef embarked on ‘the lets play a million campaign’ which aims to raise a minimum of one million soccer balls by 2010. These balls will be distributed to selected underprivileged children and communities throughout South Africa.

In addition to having the backing of SuperSport The “Let’s Play A Million” campaign is supported by five radio stations in South Africa reaching a vast section of our population. The radio stations are East Coast Radio, Heart 104.9, OFM, Kaya FM and Algoa FM. Combined with the SuperSport reach — which includes selected DStv channels — this ensures awareness across all cultural levels and will reach those who can make a difference from a financial/donation perspective.

SuperSport and Unicef would like as many children as possible to, quite literally, get a real kick out of the event. In order to achieve this, Let’s Play, SuperSport’s premier social responsibility project, has launched a national campaign to uplift children in South Africa through the universal language of sport. Unicef, the United Nations agency for children, supports this initiative to ensure the right of children to play and that through sport and recreation; children can reduce potential risky behaviour and develop skills for their optimal development.

Macharia Kamau, Country Representative for Unicef, is fully behind the campaign. “It will raise awareness of the grave social challenges children face on a daily basis. At the same time, it will reinforce awareness of the right of children to play while directly supporting the Government’s ‘mass participation in sport’ strategy,” he said.

On Wednesday afternoon Shaun Bartlett took along teammates Rowen Fernandez as they travelled to the KAYA – FM studios in Newtown in the Johannesburg CBD where they teamed up with the likes of Orlando Pirates Benedict Vilakazi. As they begun the process of receiving pledges for the one million balls as well as started handing out soccer balls to various schools.

Bartlett said afterwards “I began my involvement with this project in March, and from the outset what appealed to me was that I could help kids get involved in playing sport which could have many physical and emotional benefits to their lives. The Chiefs striker is looking forward to continuously drumming up support for this initiative as he explained further, “I will get some of my team mates including myself to pledge a certain number of soccer balls. In addition I will be appearing on radio and television shows to drum up support and give further publicity to the ‘Lets play a million initiative’”.

Kaizer Chiefs brand manager Dara Carroll has indicated that the club will also be lending a hand, and will be making a donation in kind to the project as well “Shaun told us yesterday that another team has donated 1 000 balls we are putting a strategy in place where by we can out do them. At Kaizer Chiefs we always look to get involved with projects that can really help uplift people in a meaningful way, being a sports entity there can be no better way than for us to help get the children of South Africa playing sport”.

A national radiothon, involving all five-partner radio stations, will take place on June 27 to receive pledges.

People or organisations wishing to make a donation to this worthy initiative will be able to do by SMSing the word “ball” to the number 42500 (from May 1, 2007). The pledge amount per soccer ball is R30 and this will be the cost of each SMS.