Student Alpha

Back in 2009 a group of students, and other random people who hadn't properly thought it through, agreed to try and break the Guinness World Record for the longest running five aside football match ever.

The record as it stood was 24 hours...

The rules:

• Teams must remain the same throughout. No player may join who wasn't in the initial line up
• 7 a-side with rolling subs
• 5 Players from each side must be on the pitch at all times
• Each hour played earns a 5 minute breather break for health and safety

So at 11am Saturday 15th August 2009 we kicked off. 26 hours and 882 goals later we had set a new world record and raised £18,987.

The money raised funded two GATs (not sure what a GAT is? then click ‘here’). We trained over 40 young church leaders in Kenya to run the Alpha course.

Another area of the world where Alpha is running is Borneo!

After a conference that Jamie Haith (heads up Youth Alpha and Student Alpha) attended there, he met an incredible ministry called ‘The Reading Bus’.

These guys, headed up by Pastor Cheli, drive off roaders into the jungle and teach children there to read and share the gospel using, amongst other things, Student Alpha (absolute dream job!!).

We loved this and so with the leftover money raised, they have just bought a brand spanking new ‘Reading Bus’.

It was definitely a fun, if not painful, way to raise money and the record stood for the best part of 35 days too! (A month later another team broke our record by 2 hours). Check out the time-lapse video of our fundraiser above and see the pictures of the Reading Bus 8 below…