By Simon Hare | Development Director, Globalteer, parent charity
Christmas is coming and the children of Siem Reap in Cambodia are getting excited – not because of the imminent arrival of the jolly bearded man all dressed in red, but for the imminent start of the Globalteer Junior Soccer League. And this year’s league sees some exciting changes which are testament to the success of the project and our commitment to sport having real social impact as well as being great fun!
Exciting changes for the new soccer season
This year the league enters its sixth season and is now enjoyed by over 1,000 disadvantaged children from more than 25 schools and charity projects, playing in more than 70 teams. One of the major changes to the league this year is that it will be run entirely by the students participating in our female empowerment initiative, Goals for Girls.
Fresh from proving their leadership and organisational skills by running this year’s hugely successful Globalteer Games, a day-long celebration of sport from more than 1,000 children, the girls will work in teams of three or four managing our popular Sunday soccer league.
It's not just the winning...
And in another important change to the league, the winners at the end of the season in April will be decided on much more than just how many goals were scored and how any games won. The Globalteer Junior Soccer League has always been one of the ways we teach children about team work, communication and fair play. From this season each team taking part in the league will be marked across four different criteria: games won and goals scored; fair play and sportsmanship; teamwork; and finally, professionalism.
In previous years the league had to use photo ID cards for players to ensure, for example, that older players were not being sneaked into younger age group teams to gain an unfair advantage. But now that playing fairly, professionally and as a team are as important as winning, we have decided to forgo ID cards and create the new honour system. This is a huge leap forward when winning at any cost always used to be the norm.
More sport-for-social-impact initiatives
Other sports are also used to teach the children life skills that go way beyond how to excel at sport. Joining in with all the excitement of the Rugby World Cup we are currently playing touch rugby in our daily sports sessions, teaching the children the value of working as a team and harnessing their new found enthusiasm for working together to focus on caring for their local environment, starting with an anti-litter campaign!
The children have already enjoyed learning about children’s rights while playing volleyball and soon will be learning all about conflict resolution through soccer. Watch this space!
Children love sport and by learning important messages and skills while doing something they really enjoy means that the sports programme is really having a positive impact on hundreds of Cambodian Children’s lives.
Thank you for your support – it really makes a difference, and if you can, please help spread the word about our work by sharing this with your friends.
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