The Ball in Mae Sot: 2nd to 5th of April 2023
The Spirit team and The Ball hit the road again and headed 8 hours North of Bangkok to the Thai – Myanmar border on 2nd of April to run a capacity-building sustainability workshop for the non-profit football for good organisation PlayOnside’s staff and volunteers.
PlayOnside’s long term, sustainable and flexible approach uses football to encourage gender equality and social cohesion in more than 20 Burmese Schools for displaced Burmese migrant and refugee (boys and girls in equal numbers) children in the Tak Province of Thailand.
The Burmese education system has been torn apart, once again, by the latest military coup d’état (2021). Education in Myanmar is once again being used for political control, some would say brainwashing. Critical thinking is not permitted. Instead repetition and memorisation is standard practise. Local Burmese schools in the Tak Province across the border in Thailand, where PlayOnside operates, are using education material of the system that was in place before the February 2021 military coup. Students, however, are not able to receive a recognised school leaving qualification. A lost generation, lacking perspective, is developing.
According to UNICEF, there is no accurate data on the total number of migrant Burmese children due to a large proportion being undocumented, but it is estimated that the number of migrant children enrolled in 65 Migrant Learning Centres (MLCs) in five border districts in Thailand’s Tak province went up from 10,808 in June 2022 to 11,584 in September 2022. Many of these children fled violence and urgently needed shelter and safety. Many more children end up working in very poor conditions in factories. or in agriculture fields, or turn to prostitution.
PlayOnside is doing what it can to help. It hires local Burmese staff (there are 14 of them currently employed). It gives them the opportunity to further develop their skills within the organisation and provides them work that they love to do that helps their own people and makes their often make-shift communities stronger, as well as providing income, perspective and some hope for the future.
Anna Rodriguez, Fundraising and Partnerships Manager, at PlayOnside had this to say about the workshop:
“The workshop covered topics about the SDGs, sustainability methods and exercises, #footballfairplay, #theater games, and also both organisations learning from each other. It enabled the participants to understand more about the importance of utilising a sustainable approach to social and community development.”
