On Sunday 11 November 2012, Rohan Duncan, the founder of the Have a Ball Foundation, flew to Alice Springs where he met up with his close friend Roger to go on a 4 day road trip to distribute sporting balls to kids in remote schools in indigenous communities in Central Australia. These balls were donated as part of a number of ‘bring a ball’ charity event days held during the year by Melbourne based schools and businesses. A total of 7 remote schools were targeted in the visit which had been pre-arranged with the principals of each remote school. These included: Wallace Rockhole, Papunya, Areyonga, Wattarka, Imanpa, Ammonguna & Kites school. There were plenty of rough dirt tracks to get out to some of the communities and over 1000 kms travelled with some spectacular sites to see along the way.

The goal of the trip was to experience first-hand the effect of the foundation’s first delivery of over 800 sporting balls to kids in these communities and to ensure that all the efforts of all those involved in fundraising and organising charity event days as well as the work involved in establishing the foundation was worthwhile. The end result far exceeded all expectations and the response from the kids and teachers in these communities was quite overwhelming. It was certainly one of the most humbling life changing experiences we will never forget.

We got the opportunity to spend time at each of the schools and spend time in their classes as well as playing sports games with them using the balls that had been donated. We were able to witness the great work the teachers were doing at these schools by educating these kids about some of the most important things effective their lives including such things as being active, basic hygiene and eating healthy foods. The children at the schools were amazingly friendly & loving and were all so excited when they saw us bringing in a huge bag of balls to their school.

We also met some fantastic people during our journey including Reg Ramsden who does some amazing work with the local Lilla community for the Lassiter Group of Schools. Reg is involved in educational tours in these areas for Melbourne and Sydney based school children to also get involved in a once in a lifetime experience with these communities and recently took a group of indigenous kids to Sydney where they experienced many new things for the first time including flying in a plane and swimming in the ocean. For more information on school tours please visit www.remote-tours.com

Reg kindly donated his 4WD and all the necessary camping equipment for us to successfully do the road trip. We look forward to some more exciting opportunities to work with these communities which will be released next year.

Special thanks to our sponsors Marshall Batteries and CBW for distributing the balls to Central Australia as well as all schools and businesses who have held ‘bring a ball’ event days and we look forward to a bigger and better year next year.

Please view the News page for a full gallery of the road trip.