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Why It’s So Important Now To Use Sports to Create Social Impact

“Football is fun, but it can be more than that too,” says Samedy Yin, head of ISF’s football programme. “There are ways we can use it to learn and teach about social issues, such as drug and alcohol use, domestic violence and gender inequality. That’s at the heart of what we try to do at ISF.”

Over the past six months, our coaches have had to adapt to a new reality by spreading awareness of COVID-19 through their role as  community champions and inventing new and safe ways to play sports. However, after a long period of uncertainty, schools and organised sports have been given the green light to resume activities across Cambodia, meaning that our football programme can start to return to a new kind of normality. Since the news broke,  our coaches have been busy organising football games and events –  with government-approved safety measures in place – to reach marginalised groups of young people who have been most affected by COVID-19-related restrictions.

Football has always been at the heart of our mission to create social progress in Cambodia. We have long recognised the huge popularity of football among Cambodians, especially children and other young people, and it’s potential to  be used as a vehicle to deliver valuable life lessons. By using sport as a tool for education, we seek to help players overcome major social challenges in their communities, including drugs, gender inequality, and crime.

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ISF Coaches review the rules of Social Distance Football

"The training encourages people from many different minorities to play sport, develop their confidence, and express their opinions, and it also helps young people to stay away from illegal drugs and crime."

Lay Mengleap, ISF Coach

Our long-standing partnership with the internationally renowned organization Coaches Across Continents has enabled us to expand the reach and impact of our Football Programme across Cambodia. In 2019, we adapted the model to Cambodia’s local context through our own ‘Sport for Social Impact’ programme.

“For me, the social impact training ISF delivers is very different from other football training because it teaches participants about social issues,” says Lay Mengleap, ISF football coach, and active training participant. “The training encourages people from many different minorities to play sport, develop their confidence, and express their opinions, and it also helps young people to stay away from illegal drugs and crime.”

As football coaches and organisers across Cambodia begin to prepare for the upcoming resumption of football and other sports programmes, we realized that now was the perfect time to reinforce messages about how sport can be used as a tool for positive social change. In the month of September, we organised a two Sport for Social Impact training events, one here in Phnom Penh and another in the rural centre of Battambang. Our Football Programme team has another planned for October in Kampot. It is a massive operation, with more than 200 people attending the training so far, including heads of schools, PE teachers, coaches, NGO staff, players, and community leaders.

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To ensure the safety of participants, all games and activities were adapted to follow physical distancing guidelines. But despite these restrictions, the feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive as they expressed their joy at being able to play group sports again. “One attendee from Kampuchea Balopp Organization said that the training is important and interesting because it reflects on current social issues in Cambodia,” says Samedy. “Some participants from other organizations agreed it was useful but also asked ISF to include new topics about issues in the communities they work with, which is something we’ll certainly do in the future.”

The team also created some games which used football to educate and remind players about maintaining good hygiene habits to combat COVID-19 in the coming months. The hope is that these games will be used by the participants to teach children across the whole country, helping to keep the impact of the virus minimal in Cambodia.

One of the most powerful outcomes of these training events is the increase in confidence of the young players. “In particular, we had one HIV-positive female player join, who was very shy and uncomfortable to express her opinions at first,” recalls Samedy. “But after joining in with some games and activities, she became visibly more comfortable and confident to share her ideas. She even delivered a great presentation during the training. Things like that give me a lot of hope for the future.”

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