Always on
This project successfully funded on 11th September 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
Platinum League - young athletes in Uganda compete
Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom
Aim
For years young Ugandan athletes have had little opportunity to flourish. This competition gives children 9-15 chance to show their ability
Chrysalis is a Ugandan NGO linked to UK charity Chrysalis Youth Empowerment Network. Our mission is to enable children and youth reach their potential in whatever field they are able to excel. This can be music or dance, art or academics and this event focuses on athletics in particular.
Over the last few years enthusiasm for athletics in Uganda has grown and more interest has been shown in developing the talent of children to emulate their heroes and heroines, like Kiprotich and Cheptegei, Nakaayi and Peruth Chemutai. CHildren in Northern Uganda have great potential and so Chrysalis decided to include an athletics track in the build of their Secondary School in 2020/2021. During the pandemic, Uganda's rules were particularly limiting activities dramatically, yet athletics was allowed and so we were able to identify a number of very able to children to form the core of our athletics team in Omoro sub-county, in the central part of Northern Uganda.
With the track upgraded by 2023, the children started to focus on their training, with Chrysalis developing its own coaches to motivate the children and we have been running 3 events a year for young athletes 15 and under since 2021, bringing children from Omoro, Agago, Gulu, Oyam and Nwoya sub-counties, as well as a team from Kampala.
In a few weeks time in September, Chrysalis is going to be running its latest Platinum League event, with teams battling from West Nile region, Arua and Terrego, Omoro (where we are based) and Agago to the North East. These regions are the strongest all-round athletics areas in Uganda, but they have never had a chance to compete against each other, due to lack of any funding support for transport of these children from their home areas.
The Platinum League allows any children to participate, so long as they are in the age bands of 9-12 or 13-15 (Junior and Senior) with equal numbers of boys and girls. We give each district an opportunity to pick their best 24 athletes (6 from each category) and the children are brought together in a professional event. This time the event will be part of the Uganda Athletics Federation official programme, with the West Nile teams, who won the National Primary Schools Junior Championship and Agago winning the National Primary Schools Senior Championship. In 2024 Omoro took 2nd place, but we know our children are some of the most talented in the world, as one is an age group world record holder in triple jump and other missed age group world records in a recent competition by tenths of a second in track events, so we deserve to be there too.
Daniel (10) measuring his World best distance of 10.80m for triple jump on a very soggy day!
The objectives of the competition are multiple:
1. To demonstrate to people in Northern Uganda that their children can compete against any in the world, encouraging further investment in athletics
2. To build the self esteems of participating children, some of whom might not genuinely know how good they are
3. To motivate children to continue their training throughout the year, as the Primary School events take place only in the March/April period.
4. To help build a team of officials and inspire leaders to work with their children and build on their skills
5. To one day bring the Platinum League into other countries in East Africa and bring about more investment in athletics, inspiring more people to watch and be interested in international athletics.
The Platinum League is a standard three-day programme. Terrego, Arua and Agago, will offer one team, while Omoro will have three seeded teams plus another team we call the "All Stars", which include children from all over Uganda.
We run all the athletics events from 60m to 1500m, all throws and jumps and also a cross-country event, which circles the circles the Chrysalis school for 4.5km. Every event is hand-timed and hand-measured and the children go home knowing how good they are compared to the track records for their category. We encourage all children to own a watch, so they can measure their own developing performance between Platinum League events.
In the spirit of youth empowerment, the Chrysalis staff and experts have trained three groups of youth of varying ages to be skilled and efficient independent officials. They attend every event and ensure that sportsmanship is always there and cheating very rare. Also, we focus on ensuring that all children purporting to be within the age category are of the right age, a common problem in Ugandan sports.
Chrysalis sponsors about 42 children with its programme, but the sponsorship is much more than simply an athletics training programme, even though that is a very exciting prospect enticement for children in Omoro and in the nearby districts. We also include all of the services offered at Chrysalis Secondary School, an innovative school, that includes a whole variety of different activities and clubs, including music, art, dance, comedy, Star Trek and Space, recycling, engineering, debating, discovery, computing, cooking and many more. So children are able to explore their potentials, not just in athletics, but in a wide variety of fields. If you'd like to sponsor any of our athletes, please let us know on [email protected] for further information on the athletics sponsorship programme.
This event contains three key expenses:
Transport from and home to West Nile by coach for 48 children and their coaches - £1100
Transport from and home to Agago by vehicle for up to 24 children - £260
Food for the participants for 3-4 days - £200
Total costs £1560
If we can reach this, we will offer a stretch target for the children to be able to earn medals.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made