JAG Foundation In Ghana
THE JAG Sports and Education Foundation, an organization that seeks to give the youth the opportunity to develop and achieve their potential through sports and education, will soon be operational in Ghana.
The foundation was first launched in April 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Last weekend, JAG Sports and Education Group of South Africa, led by its founder Greg James and Herbert Mensah, who established Prosport Ghana some years ago in collaboration with Prosport International South Africa, visited the country to show solidarity with Ghana and the families of the May 9th Stadium Disaster victims.
The foundation held a press conference at the Labadi Beach Hotel in Accra last Saturday.
It was attended by important dignitaries such as Mr. Owusu Ansah, Director at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports; Mr. Herbert Mensah, former Asante Kotoko Chief Executive; Greg James, founder of JAG Foundation; Ms Bron Villet, Executive Director of JAG Foundation; Honorable Alban S.K. Bagbin, Minority Leader in Parliament; and Mr. Gayton McKenzie, a JAG partner.
According to Herbert Mensah, the importance of always remembering May 9 lay not so much in the sorrows, but in the message to all sports fans who were still alive today.
“There is hope if we can look for wisdom in whatever we do while remembering the dead.
We must never forget the future of the youth of this planet as we do everything to give them hope and a will to excel in all they do.
“In April this year, I was invited to Greece for the launch of Prosport Greece. I met a truly inspiring group of people in the form of JAG Sports and Education Foundation.
As it is known South Africa also had a stadium disaster in 2001 when about 45 people died at the Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg; and when this topic came up Greg James had no hesitation in offering to visit Ghana on my invitation to show solidarity with the people of Ghana,” he stated.
Herbert added that this selfless gesture made him feel ashamed as a Ghanaian, and he questioned how many people would have given up extremely valuable time to go to a foreign country for an event that had nothing to do with them.
During the function Mr. Gayton delivered a compelling message to the youth of Ghana based on his life experience.
He said, “I made a choice to be a career criminal at the age of 16 and went on to rob numerous banks.
I was sentenced to fifteen years in prison at the age of 20 and set about a steady process of taking control of prison activities”.
He narrated that at a point when he was ready to leave prison early, with the sole intention of being an even more hardened criminal, he witnessed something that changed his life. It led to one of the biggest prison exposés in the world.
Instead of leaving the Prison to flood his hometown and country with drugs and further crime, he now had a dream of cleaning up the streets where he grew up.
Mrs Bron Villet on her part said the visit was hugely successful and that an agreement in principle had been reached to establish a Ghana Chapter of JAG and the detail about the activities and programmes of JAG in Ghana would be worked out during the coming months and the development announced through the media and on the JAG Website.
By Pierre Toto