From Lesenepole to the Prison Gates: How Boikaego Is Using Sport to Reach the Forgotten

^{This story is featured as part of SUCCEED Stories, through the SUCCEED Framework. SUCCEED (Supporting Communities Empowerment & Development through Sport for All) is a global framework dedicated to fostering community empowerment and development through capacity building in Sport for All. Led by TAFISA in collaboration with the IOC through its Olympism365 strategy, SUCCEED aims to provide a unified and synergistic approach towards building the capacity of Sport for All stakeholders.}

Goitseone Molibi Boikaego grew up in a family of twelve in Lesenepole Village, a small rural community of around 2,400 people in the Palapye District of Botswana. There were no indoor facilities, no structured sport infrastructure, and limited opportunities beyond the football grounds at the local schools. Sport, he says, is not just games. "It's discipline, healing, and a second chance."

He would need all three. An ankle injury ended his athletic career and left him lost - until he found a different way to stay inside sport. Through coaching, refereeing, and community organising, he discovered that his role wasn't only on the field. It was in making sure others could get there.

When he came across the TAFISA Certified Leadership Course in Sport for All, he saw his chance. The course gave him tools he had never had formal access to before - proposal writing, project planning, stakeholder engagement, and safeguarding. He used them to build something no one in his community had attempted: a Sport for Rehabilitation and Reintegration Project at Mahalapye Prison's Female Wing. On 12 June 2026, 62 people - inmates, officers, and volunteers - took part in football, netball, chess, morabaraba, and diketo. National media covered the event. The Botswana Ministry of Justice took notice.

From a village of 2,400 people to the prison gates, Boikaego's story is about what happens when someone is given the platform to lead, and refuses to waste it. Read the full story here.