CATCH Trust: Turning Sport into a Pathway for Youth Growth

Are you passionate about sport? Have you ever thought about pursuing a career in the field? There are many barriers to entry to practice sport professionally, which can make this thought seem too far out of reach to ever become a reality. At the same time, there are small beacons of hope.

A fresh, highly effective movement is taking shape on local fields: leveraging sport not just as a pastime but as an engine for economic mobility, personal development and career growth. CATCH Trust is an active contributor to this movement. The Cape Town-based organisation’s mission is to build sustainable sports and life-skills ecosystems in low-income communities. Using cricket as an entry point, CATCH Trust equips our youth with the mindset, experience and practical capabilities needed to navigate the modern economy.

Redefining Sport as a Career Pipeline

Sport inherently fosters values that corporate boardrooms and startup incubators look for: resilience, accountability, strategic problem-solving and communication under pressure. CATCH Trust bridges these athletic fundamentals with real-world outcomes, demonstrating how sport acts as a multi-dimensional platform for young professionals:

Employability & Career Progression: Participation opens doors into the broader sports, education and non-profit sectors.
Transferable Soft Skills: Mastery on the field requires managing stress and collaborating effectively. These core soft skills directly improve work readiness across every industry.
Personal Development & Agency: Success isn’t limited to playing professionally. It is defined by discovering individual strengths, building confidence and taking ownership of one’s trajectory.

The SportSmart Futures Programme

To translate athletic participation into tangible economic opportunities, CATCH Trust partnered with Lucha Lunako to deliver the SportSmart Futures Programme.

Specifically designed for young adults aged 18 to 35 who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET), the dynamic initiative uses sport as a plug to connect youth to career and personal development. Its business and entrepreneurship component gives participants the chance to develop an understanding of business fundamentals and the skills required to create their own opportunities. SportSmart Futures combines sport, education, mentorship, entrepreneurship and skills development to equip young people with the confidence, knowledge and practical skills needed to further their studies, or pursue employment, entrepreneurship and meaningful opportunities within their own communities.

A young person may learn how to bat, bowl or field, but through the process they are also learning how to communicate, manage pressure, work with others, solve problems, receive feedback, take responsibility and persevere when things do not go their way.
These skills are transferable to almost every area of life. They can help a young person become a better student, colleague, leader, entrepreneur or community member. Take Siyamtanda Myataza, Founder of Breakthrough Blend, who built a nutrition and wellness-based company that delivers measurable social impact alongside commercial success. From mobile wellness solutions and functional nutrition to corporate wellness and community health initiatives, Breakthrough Blend is a company that creates value beyond profit.

The numbers reflect a growing movement: over 100 young people have enrolled in the SportSmart Futures Programme, with approximately 70 having graduated in 2025.

Real Impact and paying it forward

With more than 500 youth having participated in CATCH Trust’s various initiatives, you can be sure there are many success stories to have come about. Another example is Sinelethu Yaso, who started playing cricket at a young age at Impendulo Primary School, then went on to receive a bursary for her high school studies and pursued youth provincial cricket. She later made it to the senior provincial team. Through her hard work and determination, supported by the programmes of CATCH, she started coaching at Leading Edge Sports Foundation. Sinelethu also recently became part of the team that headed to the CATCH Trust UK Tour in 2026.

For CATCH, success is not only about the numbers and hard figures. It is also about young people developing greater confidence, communication skills, a stronger sense of possibility about their futures and employability. We have also seen young people progress from being participants and players into interns, coaches and administrators, allowing them to develop professionally while giving back to the programmes that supported them.

The impact is when a young person begins to see themselves differently, when they recognise their own abilities and start considering opportunities they may not previously have thought could be possible.