For many years the club has supported the East Africa Character Development Trust (EACDT), a charity closely associated with Kenya Kongonis CC, through fundraisers when the Kongonis visit during our Cricket Week.
In 2025, after Ronny Harrison spent a spell out in Kenya coaching for the charity, our support has been taken a step further as we have become one of the EACDT’s first “partner clubs” in the UK.
Launched in 2013, the mission of the EACDT is to transform the lives of disadvantaged young Africans: see www.eacdt.org. It provides cricket coaching and character education to thousands of children in schools in slum areas of Nairobi. As the schools within the program testify, it makes a huge difference to the children who benefit, fostering the character strengths that are essential to success not just at school but in life, and giving them the confidence to help improve their own communities.
As a partner club, Blackheath has been linked with Dr Aggrey Primary School, where around 800 kids benefit from the EACDT program. The kids come from three nearby Nairobi slum areas, and the school is badly under-resourced. Conditions are really tough and the EACDT offers hope and a real chance for the kids to improve their lives and their communities.
The cost of running the program for a year at the school is £6,500 and that's the sum we’re trying to raise in 2025. In addition, we’re collecting used cricket kit for the program and children’s books for the school library.
To contribute to the campaign, please use the link below, or if you have cricket kit or children’s books you want to donate just bring them along to the club.
Developing connections
Aside from our support, we’re developing connections with the EACDT in other ways.
First, the charity will in future be offering the opportunity to talented young cricketers from Blackheath – especially those doing gap years – to come out to Kenya to coach in the EACDT program, whilst also playing at some of the top clubs in Nairobi, including the Nairobi Club, home of the Kongonis themselves. This is a life-changing opportunity. Volunteers will be looked after by a local team with strong UK connections, headed up by EACDT project director David Waters MBE (who has a long-term association with Cranleigh School), and the package will involve a short safari as well.
Second, we hope in due course to organise a pre-season cricket tour to Kenya, either as a Blackheath club tour or together with another partner club or clubs. This would be a tour like no other, taking in matches at several grounds in Nairobi and Mombasa, as well as incorporating a safari in one of Kenya’s unforgettable national parks, with the option of a couple of days on the beach to relax. It would also of course involve a visit to see the work of the EACDT which we will be supporting.
For more information contact Nick Harrison (nharrison@serlecourt.co.uk).