“Say hi to Katey”, said the U.S. Ambassador as we told him of our plans to visit Kids Play International (KPI) in Siem Riep. And so we did. Katey Lippit, also a U.S. citizen, is the Country Director of Kids Play International, a grassroots sports organisation using the power of sports to give children a chance. Our team was very impressed by Katey and the amazing team of predominantly young female coaches that she has assembled around her. Their motivation was there for all to see.
Katey and her team hosted The Ball and our team of ball-carriers/coaches at Kurata Unity Primary School for a fairplay baseball session in the just-about-bearable morning heat. We returned there to run a football under the climate microscope session with KPI later that afternoon. Everyone feels welcome at the KPI session, this was depicted by their tuk tuk driver Rean, who also joined in the session. Sophia Butzke (from Spirit of Football) fell for the wonderful orphan boy from Battanbang who joined our session and was very proud to take care of the SDG ball. The session involved having participants pick up plastic rubbish from the school yard. The rubbish was then dumped onto the field of play as one of several climate handicaps.
Katey reflected upon the session:
SOF and KPI are all about fair play and have similar values that we teach to our participants but so far we haven’t begun to address environmental issues in our work. Thanks to the training, our team now has got some ideas about how we can do this in the future.