THE BIGGEST RURAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE

Rhino Cup Champions League

The RCCL is an amateur football league in rural Africa for young men and women located in communities surrounding national parks and wildlife reserves.  The League was founded in Mozambique in August 2016 by Wild and Free and a bunch of freethinkers, disruptors, and groundbreakers, with the fierceness required to free young people from poaching and give poaching syndicates the red card, creating impact from within the communities affected by poaching and changing the game in conservation.

​Why a football league?

The RCCL has adopted an unconventional people-centered approach to conservation, whereby conservation is delivered as a means to enrich people's lives, benefiting both conservation and local communities in a much more sustainable and socially just way.
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African youth surrounding wildlife reserves are highly marginalized with school drop-out and teen pregnancy rates unacceptably high. Rhino poaching remains a major issue that must be addressed more promptly, and marginalized youth are targeted by wildlife crime syndicates as prime poaching recruits. 

Typically, this all-too-common issue is addressed through outreach and awareness campaigns that theorize that if youth just knew more about rhinos and their threats, they would help protect them. 

While sharing information about rhino threats is certainly important, we believe that harnessing the rhino's currency to create opportunities that provide tangible benefits to youth by supporting activities they value will demonstrate that securing a future for rhinos is also helping enrich lives and livelihoods.

In essence, we believe that by harnessing three key emotions, including pride, gratitude, and compassion for rhinos through football, we will make significant contributions towards improving the situation for both youth and rhinos.

Given the popularity and importance of football in Africa, it is hard to imagine a more fitting mechanism to connect youth in rural communities with protecting their rhino than by creating a league that is sponsored by and catalyzed from successful and lasting rhino conservation.

In Africa, this is the RCCL.

The RCCL Leagues

YOUNG PEOPLE FREE FROM POACHING

RURAL YOUTH & WILD RHINOS

GIVING POACHING THE RED CARD

"​Since we are with Wild and Free Foundation we have a great way to fight against the rhino hunting where humans lose their lives and others are imprisoned and stay in jail."
​Orlando "Watch" Cossa
Coach, Club De Corumana

RCCL Mission

The Mission of the RCCL is to provide opportunities for young people living in marginalized communities surrounding national parks and wildlife reserves to help reduce poaching, crime, school dropouts, early pregnancies, and substance abuse.

RCCL Vision

The Vision of the RCCL is to be the largest and most impactful amateur football league in rural Africa.

How Can Football Protect The Rhino?

Community Engagement

The RCCL is fostering successful relationships with people through conversations and a clear sense of purpose. The RCCL is innovative in finding solutions with the communities, not in spite of them. Our actions, activities, and methods for expediting sustainable community initiatives are built on community engagement.

Economic Opportunity

The Rhino Cup Champions League contributes to the local economy by creating career alternatives, generating revenue through prize money, paying referees, and encouraging the development of small businesses. In every RCCL season, we have seen increased family income, mainly for small traders around the fields, through a crew of hardworking ladies, primarily widows, offering food and beverages to the more than 16,000 citizens.

Local Impact

The Rhino Cup Champions League is making a big difference in reducing the number of rhino deaths. Statistics from the villages with soccer teams show a 90% reduction in the number of arrests and deaths of young men related to poaching. Incursions into the parks for the slaughter of rhinos are reduced with the occupation of young people every week through training and games.

“Boys drop out of school because they think that they need to have money early so they just risk poaching.” ​

WHY A MEN’S FOOTBALL LEAGUE?

The Rhino Cup Champions League addresses three challenges that typically lead to becoming a rhino poacher: boredom, idleness, and poverty. Players in the men's league are young men who could potentially become rhino poachers.

With weekly RCCL games and practices, young men have the opportunity to be part of a team, create bigger dreams, decrease idle time, and foster self-empowerment and improvement.
In 2018, 40% of male students dropped out of school in Sabié, Mozambique, with rhino poaching being the number one activity they did after dropping out. Behind poverty, becoming a rhino poacher is the second-highest reason boys drop out of school in the area.

The RCCL is creating economic growth through small businesses developing at the fields, employment opportunities in the league, prize money going directly to the clubs and players, and entrepreneurs providing paid services to help grow the league.

Over 400 widows and 1,000 orphans have been left as a result of the anti-poaching tactics that have claimed the lives of over 800 young men from this rural Mozambique area since 2008.
People are ready for change!

"40% Of young women are pregnant and drop out of school before they turn 18, and only 11% of girls continue to secondary school (high school) after primary school." (Government Post of Sabié, Mozambique)

WHY A WOMEN’S FOOTBALL LEAGUE?

On January 1, 2019 Wild and Free received a letter from the school girls in the Sabié, Mozambique area asking for a league of their own:

“Dear Wild and Free Foundation,

We, the ladies from the Primary Schools and Secondary Schools of the area of Sabié, Mozambique call for financial support to make this project come true as a means to contradict the boy's ideas to kill the rhinos to benefit their own lives and remove the wild species from nature. We would like to join the Rhino Cup Champions League with the positive manifest and feelings to tell the boys, NO TO THE KILLING OF RHINOS!

The intention of this project is to promote self-esteem and motivate the girls in order to stop school dropouts, premature pregnancies, drug addiction, and provide help in saving nature. Hence, we believe that the ladies can be the guidance and close advisers of the boys so that they may understand the natural species preservation of the rhinos since these wild species are going extinct. Those boys willing to be poachers run much risk of losing their precious lives because of killing these animals.

Thus, from this idea we think we can get much expression of our thought about giving advice and council to the men willing to be poachers in the future, as well as it is also a better way to entertain them, the children, and the community in general.

Football is the best sport, very much competitive, and from it we can call attention to avoid increasing actions that can risk human integrity in relation to the Mother Nature. With this, it is possible for us to take part in the fight against the killing of the rhinos through Wild and Free Foundation."

#CHANGINGLIVES

IN AFRICA, THIS IS THE RCCL.