Difference through Sport

By Marco Jacobs

Difference Thru Sport is an organisation that is positively impacting the community of Parow Valley and surrounds, using sport as a tool of influence to affect change in the lives of young people. Marco Jacobs of Radio CCFm, 107.5, recently had the opportunity to interview its founder, Ricky Vigeland about the work that he is doing in his community.

Marco Jacobs: I am chatting with Ricky Vigeland, the founder of Difference Thru Sport and Rick is doing a great job in the community of Parow Valley. How are you doing Ricky?

Ricky Vigeland: I am very well, thank you Marco.

Marco Jacobs: So Ricky tell me how did this Difference Thru Sport initiative start?

Ricky Vigeland: Well we started off in 2007. I know it’s while back already. It started when myself and my two boys took a walk through the community and we came across old abandoned tennis courts and the place was really messed up. The trees were all growing around the area. So we decided that weekend to do a clean-up operation because we saw a lot of potential in the courts where we could start something for the kids in the area.

Marco Jacobs: You have a passion for kids. So what have you found are the challenges in your area?

Ricky Vigeland: Parow Valley has also got its challenges and we also have kids that stand on the street corners and at the shops. We’ve identified this and we started to introduce soccer, where we’ve found that soccer was a very effective tool that we could use to keep kids busy. And once we had a structure going by putting up a set of poles and not just introducing kids and giving them a ball, we found that this was a great attraction and kids started coming to the area.

Marco Jacobs: What have you learnt about Difference through Sport and the impact on the community?

Ricky Vigeland: Well this was a great challenge Marco. We started, like I said in 2007, and it was a lot of rough, a lot of teething stages and we didn’t expect for this thing to grow as it is now. Because till two years ago, we saw that we’re called Difference Thru Sport, but we were only focussing on the football side but there were other needs that arose and there are a lot of young people from the ages of fifteen to twenty one that are skilled in the area of different sports. So they are introducing their skills.

Marco Jacobs: There’s been a lot of growth since 2007, what has been some of the standout moments for you?

Ricky Vigeland: The thing that stands outs for me was the holiday programmes we had this year! Where we got the neighbours involved. This was very awesome how our community got together and the mommies that were at home, they came on board and fed the kids for the week, where I thought I had to do all these kind of things. They took this load and this burden from me and where I could just focus on coaching and helping the kids develop.

Marco Jacobs: You’ve mentioned the holiday programme, what are the needs for this particular initiative? Is there anything the public can help you with?

Ricky Vigeland: Yes Marco. At the moment, there’s a need for netball even where your girls are coming and they said that they want to do netball and we don’t have netball posts at the moment. So material for this, material for basketball, you know those are the kind of things that we need. We don’t want tell the kids, “look we don’t have this things so you can’t come.” So we tell them come, so we get them together. But we never focus on the things that we don’t have.

Marco Jacobs: If anyone wants to get involved with this initiative how do they contact you?

Ricky Vigeland: They can get involved with us. We’ve got an email address and they can contact me. My cellphone number is 0810170774 and they can even go to differencethrusportwp@gmail.com and yes we are even on Facebook, where you can find us on facebook.com/differencethrusport.

Marco Jacobs: Ricky Vigeland, thanks so much, hopefully a lot of good comes out of this.

Ricky Vigeland: Thanks very much Marco

You can listen to the interview on Saturday on Radio CCFm 107.5 on the Saturday Sport Show between 10am and 12pm. The show is presented by Marco Jacobs and Preston Jongbloed.