40 pairs of donated boots arrive after five-month journey
40 pairs of boots have made the journey from the United Kingdom to Kiribati, after five long months.
The boots were donated from charitable organisation Boots2Africa and shipped to Kiribati by Paul Watson, who is starting up his own charity.
“The boots were donated by individuals in the UK to Boots2Africa who provided them to me, and I sent them to Kiribati,” Watson tells Football in Oceania.
“In the next few weeks I’ll register my new charity The Playmaker Foundation, and that should allow me to work further with Kiribati.”
But the journey to the small and remote island nation was not an easy one.
“The boots left here in October and have been all over the world, they seemed to have been lost twice but reappeared and finally reached Kiribati!”
Taking to Twitter, Watson said the boots have been through 15 countries, “including, bizarrely, Latvia”.
Now the boots will hopefully be put to good use at football pitches around the country.
“Kiribati is really making huge strides but right now the funding is still so tiny for the size of their population and the scale of the development work they are doing. I’m hoping that very soon they won’t need second-hand boots from the UK, but right now they only have I think 30k NZ annually for everything so that leaves gaps,” Watson says.
Recently Kiribati also got a shipment of equipment, such as balls and shirts from the OFC.
