South Africa has won silverware at the Homeless World Cup finals in Milan, Italy, after UK entrepreneur and Ambition 24Locums managing director Penny Streeter OBE, once homeless herself, stepped in and paid for the team’s air travel to the event after government funding was withdrawn.
Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe met the 2009 Homeless World Cup team at Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, to congratulate them on their performance on 16 September 2009:
http://is.gd/3pa0g After a tough eight days of competition, the players beat Malawi 9-1 in the final of the Milan Cup, a trophy played for by the teams ranked between 17 and 24 from the original total of 48 who took part in this years’ competition.
The Homeless World Cup, Milan 2009, ran from 6th to 13thSeptember, with 500 players from 48 nations. An estimated 100 million people worldwide are homeless (Source: United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 2005).
www.homelessworldcup.org UK entrepreneur Penny Streeter’s company Ambition 24Locums is a major investor in South Africa. She is founder and managing director of the A24 Group, a medical staffing agency with a turnover of £70 million (year to June 2009), and no loans or external investors. The company opened offices in South Africa in 2004 and launched an £11 million investment programme.
“ I read that funding by the City of Cape Town stopped because of huge demands on their budgets in the recession, so I felt I had to step in. Homelessness is a terrible waste of good people, usually overtaken by events with which they just can’t cope - in the UK, one in four of the homeless are ex-military. It’s a problem which should get more attention, given British involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Penny Streeter.
South Africa hosted the Homeless World Cup in Cape Town 2006. The domestic league now involves 100 volunteers and activities in various communities of Cape Town and the Western Cape, focusing on education, social support and HIV awareness for street children. The league has grown to involve over 700 players in 55 teams: 50 per cent of the players are currently living on the street, a number of them are in drug rehabilitation programmes and others in institutions for street people.
SAHSS (South African Homeless Street Soccer) has successfully used football to foster individual development, teach positive values and life skills, strengthen education, and prevent disease through education - particularly HIV AIDS.
# For further Information:Ambition 24Locums, A24 Group,
www.a24group.com 
