South Nottingham College's Balls To Poverty programme has helped thousands of people in South Africa's urban townships. Students have also visited youngsters in rural Transkei and the birthplace of Nelson Mandela to see the poverty they face. Education Correspondent MICHAEL GREENWELL reports

IN the hills of Mvezo, a long and colourful funeral cortege passes the Balls To Poverty buses. Students learn later that the person being buried probably died from Aids.

Access to healthcare for many in rural South Africa is scarce and the basic amenities that people in Nottingham take for granted are many miles away for some villagers.

This is also an area where a lack of education and resources incubates high rates of HIV infection and many deaths are as a result of Aids.

It is the first week of the Balls To Poverty tour and the party is stationed in Bomvanaland, Mbashe, to help villagers in some of the most remote parts of South Africa's Eastern Cape.

Inside this region is Mvezo, the birthplace of Nelson Mandela, where the poverty which affects some villages is startling.

In an interval from the 34km relay there was also a chance to visit Nelson Mandela's birthplace in the Mvezo hills and a monument dedicated to the civil rights leader.

The Balls To Poverty party are also in this area to run a 35km relay to highlight the lack of access to healthcare for villagers, organised by the charity The Donald Woods Foundation.

It was a journey that Nelson Mandela had to do as a young boy to find medical help with his mother Nosekeni in 1925.

South Nottingham College student Karim Ibrahim, 18, from Hucknall, said: "It was an eye opening experience running in the heat knowing that Nelson Mandela had to do it just to find medicine.

"It was so good to see the young South Africans running at our side too and made us keep going."

The college's Jamie Prince, 19, from West Bridgford, said: "It's something else to see how some of these people live in such poverty with no shoes or socks on and holes in their clothes.

"Even then though, they are still smiling.

"This made everyone from the college really feel they were achieving something and it's been great for our teams."

The Donald Woods Foundation has supported the college's work in the Eastern Cape for two Balls To Poverty tours.

The late Donald Woods was a newspaper editor who fled South Africa during the 1980s and reported to the western media about the suspicious death in police custody of civil rights activist Steve Biko.

It also publicised the oppression and injustice under apartheid Government rule which was not widely known at the time.

Donald Woods' son Dillon is now chief executive of the foundation, which funds numerous township projects.

The relay was just one mission for the Balls To Poverty party this year and budding footballers of the Transkei also received match balls to use on newly marked out pitches as part of the programme.

They are a small fraction of the 22,000 football and rugby balls that have been distributed across South Africa by through Balls To Poverty over the last five years.

Government figures estimate that up to 500,000 people have been reached through the tours.

The football pitch building and equipment helps attract villagers who can be offered advice and health services through the then established network.

Dillon said: "Balls To Poverty is not a Father Christmas hand out.

"It uses the method of opening the door and then we get into sustainable developments such as building football pitches.

"We then use a football league which is being initially funded by Balls To Poverty as a way of getting villagers together and then expanding the minds of 15 to 30-year-olds and encouraging people to test for HIV.

"If they can be tested then they can be treated and educated."

Through networks set up so far, the Madwaleni HIV programme has got 17,000 people screened for HIV and anti-retro viral medication for 1,750 people and is the largest rural integrated programme in South Africa.

Footballs were also given to a charity which works in the heart of Mbashe with mentally disabled villagers.

And a seedling nursery was created for the project so crops could be farmed for its young people and also for surrounding villages.

Michael Gunther runs the charity Home of Peace with his wife Alexandra.

AUDIO: Hear from Michael Gunther

"The labour provided by the students is so valuable to us," Mr Gunther said.

"It has helped us tremendously because it is hard to get unspecified money from the Government solely for labour costs."

"Thanks to their work we will be able to build the fence and help to teach villagers about better farming.

"We can also grow crops which we are currently having to buy in such as maize."

Home of Peace was set up just under five years ago and works with people with learning difficulties and mental health issues.

Many of the vulnerable people they work with have been sexually abused in their villages and subsequently contracted HIV.

Mr Gunther said: "From their culture they do not see the reason why they should pass their family members to us because then they lose some of their grant aid from the Government."

The Balls To Poverty party also started work which will help locals in Mbashe build a bridge across a river.

They moved several tonnes of gravel in wheelbarrows more than 450m – from the top of a steep hill to the bottom – to start the foundations for the structure.

The bridge will help schoolchildren get across the river during flooding and pensioners also who cross the river to get to a Government office for their pension.