adminCurtworth Masango
HARARE-based social football team Falcon FC are home to the hearing and speech-impaired.
The founder of Falcon FC, Israel Nyandoro, is the man behind this beautiful project.
He uses his own money to oil Falcon FC.The club was formed in 2007. Initially, all the players had hearing challenges, except for Israel Nyandoro, and interpreter, Peter Mauchi.
After a series of poor results, he decided to integrate ex-Premier Soccer League players, to provide his club with a competitive edge.
The team is currently second in the Communications League, and has managed to rope in former PSL players like Pride Tafirenyika, Takesure Chinyama and Philip Gumiremhete.
The team encourages its players to bring their spouses, and children, to matches, to interact.
Nyandoro bankrolls his players’ income-generating projects and has even secured formal employment for some of them.
“What happened is I came across deaf players training at Harare Poly,” he told H-Metro.
“But, they were not playing any games on weekends.
“The reason was that they had no means of communicating with other teams, in order to arrange matches. “So, initially, I arranged friendly games for teams.
“After about three years of playing friendly games, we joined the Harare Marketers League.”
He added:
“We would have a shortage of players for league games.
“That was when I approached the Emerald School of the Deaf, who allowed us to use some schoolboys to play for our team.
“The schoolboys benefited immensely as we helped them integrate into the community.”
Sadly, results were still not coming because of the hearing handicaps.
Nyandoro said he decided to integrate former PSL players into the team.
The team won the league championship in 2019 without losing a game.
“We are also glad that our brand has grown stronger, as several former PSL players have found joy, playing for our team. “They find it fascinating to interact with the disabled members of the community.
“We recently added Oscar Machapa and Takesure Chinyama to our team.
“Justice Majabvi, though not in our books, is a keen member who takes time to help us, in one way or the other.
“Slowly, our community is warming up to interacting with deaf people.
“It’s always so nice to see legends like David Kutyauripo requesting to be taught sign language.
“At the end of the day, we all go home happy that we did our bit to interact with disadvantaged members of our society.”
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter