After giving up her successful career to take part in the world of Difference programme, read about how Stephanie is getting on at The Great Football Giveaway.

It took her a little while, but her first blog post for WoD was well worth the wait. ForStephanie, winning a place on the WoD programme was a truly life-changing moment. A high-flying director of communications at one of Britain’s top sponsorship firms, she handed in her notice the week after confirming her placement and thus gave up 12 years of office life for the greener pastures of charity work.

Her chosen charity, the The Great Football Giveaway, is a UK based charity that works in poor rural areas of Africa, giving away footballs to children. It was founded by Paul and Sarah Clarke, following a visit to Malawi in 2001 where they watched a village football match played with great gusto by the locals, despite a continuously deflating ball.

Seeing the village children fashion their own rudimentary footballs from bits of string and plastic bags, they vowed to return with a bushel full of fully-inflated balls for the kids. This simple idea soon grew from one village to the whole of Malawi – and from there to Angola, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania and Congo.

Inspired by this great story, Stephanie now works supporting the work of The Great Football Giveaway, having made the decision to stay on at the charity, unpaid, beyond her two month placement with WoD.

You can read more about Stephanie’s incredible experience on her blog. And to understand more about the The Great Football Giveaway, the montage below will tell you far more than we ever could about what it really means to put a smile on the face of a child with one simple act.

The Great Football Giveaway 2010 from The Great Football Giveaway on Vimeo.