Baku, Azerbaijan
November 2002


Mark Ainsbury and some of the children from Orphange #1

The city of Baku has more than 50 orphanages and is home to over 8,000 orphans. The staggering number of orphans is mainly down to the recent war with Armenia but poverty also plays a large part -  64% of Azeris live below the poverty line according to a recent UN report.
 
Before travelling to Azerbaijan, Gôl! managed to make contact with three seperate charities and arranged to visit them during our four day stay in Baku.

Farid Talebov of the charity United Aid For Azerbaijan (UAFA) admits to being more than a little surprised to have been contacted by the Welsh fans: ”Some British fans are famous in Azerbaijan for the wrong reasons,” he said, "So we were amazed - but delighted - when the Welsh supporters offered to help us.”

UAFA provides sports therapy for children in some of Baku’s many orphanages. Through UAFA the fans visited Orphanage#16 and Orphanage#1 where the donation of three football kits and a dozen footballs was extremely welcome - so welcome, in fact, that an impromptu football match ensued with the Azeris crushing the Welsh football fans by a cricket score!

Valley Juniors Football Club on Anglesey, Clydach Junior Football Club and Manselton Primary School, Swansea - whose most famous former pupil is John Charles had kindly donated the football kits to the appeal.

UAFA also benefited from a donation of $400 which Farid Talebov said would go towards helping the children compete in the Azerbaijan Special Olympics – an athletic competition which encourages children and adults with and without disabilities to mix together and compete.

Through the Azerbaijan Volunteers Union (AVU) we visited Orphanage#3 in the Khatai District of Baku where we were treated to a musical performance by some of the children and some fans even joined in a traditional Azeri dance.

Before leaving we distributed T-shirts, toothbrushes, notepads and duffle bags, kindly donated by the S4C children’s programme ‘Uned 5’ as well as numerous soft toys, which many of the 150 travelling fans had brought with them.

We were also able to donate $750 for the dance troupe to purchase traditional costumes in order to compete in an international dance competition in Moscow, Russia and the principal of the orphanage was delighted to be able to accept the money saying that they had priced the costumes and received a quote of approximately $550 which she said was beyond the budget of the orphanage.

The AVU, which also works on social projects with displaced persons throughout Azerbaijan were given $400 towards their work with refugees of the recent war with Armenia.

The third charity to receive a donation was LOTOS - The Azerbaijan Union of Disabled People's Organisation.
LOTOS works with, and on behalf of, people with disabilities by trying to raise public awareness on disability and make it possible to fully integrate disabled people of all ages into society.

Dylan Llewelyn had the honour of presenting a cheque for $750 to Elena Taranova, the Paralympic rifle shooting Gold medallist at the Sydney Olympics - it's not everyday you get to meet an Olympic champion you know!