About Us

The Craig Bellamy Foundation (CBF) is a charity that offers underprivileged children in Sierra Leone the chance to reach their true potential through sport and education, enabling them to build a better life for themselves and their communities.

 

We focus on personal and community development, running a not-for-profit football academy and a national youth football league, developed with support from UNICEF.

 

Our Vision

We aim to build a better future for Sierra Leone by offering children the opportunity to reach their full potential by playing the sport that they love.

CBF harnesses this passion for football and uses it to promote healthy choices, education for all, peace building, gender equality and sustainable development.

 

How it started

In 2007 Wales & Liverpool football star Craig Bellamy visited a friend in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Best known for its ‘blood diamonds’ and devastating civil war, Craig saw through the country’s desperate poverty. He saw potential for a project that could offer hope.

With a car full of footballs he traveled through the country, stopping wherever he saw kids playing the game they love, to give them a ball…and join in!

Everywhere he went he saw how much passion and commitment there was for the beautiful game but he also witnessed the lack of education and poor health. Craig had an idea, to use football to inspire positive personal and social change among the children.

He wanted to build an academy of excellence to give promising players the support they would need to develop on and off the field. From the foundations of the Academy, and with UNICEF’s generous support, the CBF League was born.