Amara fights for Gender Equality and Sustainable Action at Jomtien Beach Clean-up on 11.4.2023
Lee Hawkins, founder of the ASA Foundation (a Common Goal – football for good – partner organisation of SOF) told us about one of ASA’s Master Trainers: Amara Wichithong. For 25 years Amara travelled the world, representing her country (Thailand) at the highest levels of competitive, international windsurfing. Returning to set-up and run her Windsurfing and Sailing school on Jomtien Beach in Thailand. These days Amara, also a motivational speaker on gender equality, is educating the next generation of socially disadvantaged youngsters to become windsurfers on the ocean but also to have respect for people and the planet. Several of these youngsters take part in Amara’s regular beach cleaning and recycling activities at Jomtien Beach.
More than 10 million tons of waste enter the oceans every year. This waste costs the lives of thousands upon thousands of sea creatures. Seabirds mistake plastic for natural food, dolphins get entangled in old fishing nets, micro plastics make their way into the food that we all consume and end up in our own bodies too. According to the UN environment program UNEP there are now up to 18000 pieces of plastic of various sizes floating on every square km of sea surface. On the beach we find many bottles. Amara holds one up with a pair of tongs and says: “Single use plastic. It is time to stop using them!” We continue our walk and Amara remarks that she had recently found 25 face-masks within 500 metres on the beach. “Imagine what would happen when the tide comes in and the poor turtles swim into this”, she says, holding a mask up.
Amara’s beach clean-ups involve an educational component. She uses pictures she has taken to show the graphic evidence of pollution that she herself has encountered. She shows a picture of a dolphin which was killed by being tangled up in a nylon fishing net. Another picture of a windsurfing regatta with the backdrop of an enormous landfill – right next to the water. We join here for a beach clean-up. In the blazing April heat, a team of about 12 people comb a 200-meter area of beach for 15 to 30 minutes and come back with a mountain of waste, which we then separate. Most of it is non-recyclable.
After our clean-up we sit down to eat lunch – sticky rice served on leaves (no plastic here!) – and drink water from a large refillable tank in reusable cups. We talk with Tiffany and Nun Ka, friends of Amara from Hawaii and Bangkok, who are producing and selling 100% compostable and degradable plates in 3 local cooperatives. They practise a triple bottom line: people, planet and profit. Their project focuses on recruiting socially disadvantaged people and giving them employment opportunities directly in the villages they come from – thus revitalising local communities decimated by urban drift.
Amara comes from a very poor background. One of 11 children she and her siblings had to forage around looking for leftovers to get enough food to survive on. Amara’s internal and unrelenting drive helped her to get out of poverty and become the self-made woman that she is today. These days she is an advocate, also on an international stage, for the rights of women and girls. She was recently asked to speak to women in Malaysia by the Rhythm Foundation on International Women’s Day. She spoke openly, honestly and directly to the women about her experiences growing up: challenging them to take control of their lives and encouraging them to find the courage to break-out of bad situations. She hopes that the experiences she shared will inspire many other women to stand up and fight for their own rights, as she did.
Amara is not only an equality advocate, she is also a climate activist and somewhat of a sustainability expert – having spent most of her life observing nature do its work on and at the ocean. It is here in her local community that Amara wants to make a difference. Amara aims to give disadvantaged youngsters hope of a better future through the sport of windsurfing and provide them with holistic environmental education. These kids are not just learning to compete on the water, they are learning how to protect nature and we are going to need as many of them as possible in the future.
