AFC Totton
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VOLTA SPORTS IS A UK-BASED international sports and education organisation that delivers a range of services to aspiring athletes, educational institutions and community organisations who share the vision of improving the lives of young people.
One of the primary ways Volta Sports does this is by generating football business to develop local African communities. The Volta Staff Team are a mix of Ghana-based staff and a UK team of Ghanaian and Cameroonian descent. The organisation includes expertise in sporting and educational contexts gained while working with football clubs such as Chelsea, Southampton and Reading, as well as a variety of other education institutions, including New Forest Care Ltd. and The Football Association.
Volta Sports has a strong and consistent commitment to community development in Ghana and Africa at large. Through the delivery of sports and education development programmes, Volta’s staff have supported various marginalised or underprivileged children in Africa and the UK, as well as South America, the Caribbean, and the US to gain access to education and sporting provision.
Currently, Volta Sports is the Parent Organisation and sole company sponsor of the Street To School Soccer Programme, supporting the Street To School vision through consistent fundraising efforts, providing donors and sponsors, while also providing voluntary consultancy and administrative services.
Volta Sports’ directors in the UK are Ekow Elliott and BengYella Ngwa. Elliott played as an attacking midfielder between 2011 and 2018. He had two spells with Blackfield & Langley either side of a stint with Poole Town. During his second spell at Gang Warily, he played alongside several current and ex-AFC Totton players, including goalkeeper Lewis Noice and midfielder Adam Tomasso; Charlie Davis was among his teammates at Poole. In his penultimate season, Elliott was part of the Thatcham Town team that reached the final of the FA Vase at Wembley Stadium in 2016/17, before finishing his career at North Leigh.
BengYella Ngwa’s football career began two years earlier than Elliott’s, when he made his debut as a 17-year-old for Eastleigh against Southampton. Playing as a striker, he represented Totton & Eling, Blackfield & Langley and Hythe & Dibden, in addition to spells further afield with Stourport Swifts, Ledbury Town and Shortwood United.
During a two-hour AFC Totton session at Southampton’s Staplewood training complex last weekend, where two of his players were hoping to impress Stags boss Jimmy Ball, Elliott expanded on what Volta Sports do:
“We started out through our involvement with Street To School, which is a programme that provides soccer coaching to students in exchange for them meeting attendance requirements at school,” he explained.
The courses run by Street To School include a homework club, healthcare and vocational training, academic scholarships and community outreach programmes.
“We achieve a win-win situation where aspiring young footballers, who may or may not have a future in the game, can be persuaded to commit to taking their schooling seriously to better equip them to make a positive difference to their local community as adults.”
Opportunities in the game do exist for the most talented players but to qualify for a place on the programme, prospective candidates have to score highly on three important criteria: engagement, the ability to listen and learn, and the potential to become a full-time footballer.
“We try to work with clubs that have a progressive attitude towards young players, treating them with intelligence and respect. We help players to secure scholarships or to negotiate professional contracts; our model is such that our payment will often come later down the line via sell-on clauses, which we then reinvest into the project.”
Elliott’s work with Volta Sports has taken him all over the world both to discover hot prospects and to assist them in making their way into the professional game.
Success stories to date include the Under-18 attacking midfielder Evan Eghosa Aisowieren, an Austrian citizen who featured in Coventry City’s FA Youth Cup side last season; recent Brentford U18s recruit Remy-Lee Bennison, a defender who signed a four-month scholarship with The Bees in March with a view to that deal rolling into a one-year professional contract; and former Alresford Town and Blackfield & Langley forward Luke Rae, who is now playing for Icelandic third-tier side Tindastóll, under English manager Jamie McDonough. There are also players in the youth set-ups of Oxford United and Sheffield United who have benefitted from their experiences with Volta Sports, as well as in Spain, Bulgaria, Gibraltar, Qatar and the UAE.
This pre-season friendly at Miller Park will provide more ambitious young players with the opportunity to impress The Stags’ management team and hopefully begin their journey towards a successful career in football.
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By Ben Rochey-Adams
