Members of the Salem Football Club try on new shoes and uniforms.
Centretown’s Peace Tower Church is working with a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo to send a soccer club of boys to school and promote peace in a war-torn region of Africa.
Jedidiah Kabuya, a Peace Tower Church parishioner, founded the Salem Football Team last spring. Based in Goma, the club has 41 players aged between 12 and 17 and is named after the Hebrew word for “peace.” Players are selected according to financial need and many of the boys have been orphaned by conflict in the region.
This month, Kabuya is fundraising to send the players to school. He needs $30 per student, $1,230 in total. “If you don’t have money, you’re not going to school. And most of these kids have completely nothing,” says Kabuya.
Kabuya works under the charitable status of the Peace Tower Church, a Pentecostal congregation at Bronson Avenue and
MacLaren Street, to sponsor the players. Kabuya coordinates for donations raised in Ottawa to be sent to Goma, where the senior pastor at Throne de Dieu, a church founded by Kabuya’s parents, runs Salem on the ground.
Kabuya was born in Goma but says he left at the age of nine, “due to insecurity,” and moved to a refugee camp in Uganda. Kabuya immigrated to Canada five years later. He says a religious upbringing and patriotism inspired him to return to Goma and start Salem.
“He’s an amazing young man with a passion for where he comes from,” says Pastor Jonathan Hutchinson, who runs the Young Adult Ministry at Peace Tower Church.
“We’re 100 per cent behind him and we’ve kind of walked him through step by step, taking it from the area of passion to actually seeing it happen.”
Kabuya met the players for the first time last April, when he and a group of other church members travelled to Goma to distribute soccer equipment. Since then, he has worked from Ottawa to help schedule tournaments and games for the boys. In the club’s latest tournament, the boys won their first two matches but lost three.
Salem extends beyond playing soccer, however. Kabuya describes the club as half-sport, half-mentorship. “They attend practice, they build a team relationship, they meet other people who are in the same position as they are, and then the pastor and his team, we set up a staff team that morally influences these kids,” he says.
After paying for schooling, Kabuya has further goals for the club. He wants to build a new soccer field and expand the team to include girls. “I know they’re playing soccer but he’s got other long-term plans of building leaders in Goma,” says Hutchinson.
Kabuya hopes to return to Goma next year to run a soccer tournament with players from Rwanda and the D.R.C. “The genocide wars and all that, it had a toll on both countries,” says Kabuya. “Between the two countries, their relationship has really collapsed. Our goal is to rebuild that relationship.”
Rachelle Robertson, Kabuya’s sister, travelled with him to Goma last spring and also sees peace building as an important outcome of their initiatives there. “JD (Jedidiah) is telling these kids, ‘Go out, even to that country that’s attacking you. Go out there and show God’s love.’ ”
Robertson says that Salem has helped the Peace Tower Church and Throne de Dieu form an important relationship – so important that the leaders of Throne de Dieu are considering giving that church a new name: either Salem or Peace Tower Church.