At Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, sport lights up the lives of thousands of children
Putting a smile on their faces, boosting their pride and giving them hope for the future: this is the guiding principle along which the Paris Saint-Germain Endowment Fund, start-up Klabu, NGO Friendship and the UNHCR are driving their project to help children from the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp and its surrounding communities in Bangladesh.
Hundreds of thousands of children from the Rohingya community are currently living in the world's largest refugee centre, Cox’s Bazar, where almost a million people live under the protection of the UNHCR. Every day, they receive food, treatments, protection and, wherever possible, education with the hope of, one day, being able to build a future for themselves.
Day after day, the Paris Saint-Germain Endowment Fund works with start-up KLABU, Bangladeshi NGO Friendship and the UNHCR to make life more pleasant for these extremely disadvantaged children.
Since last April, a small van decorated in the Rouge & Bleu colours and filled with sports equipment has been driven around the refugee camp. It also visits the surrounding villages to offer the same opportunities to Bangladeshi children from the host community. Thanks to this equipment and the involvement of the PSG x Klabu x Friendship coaches, this initiative has already encouraged many children to take up sport, such as a group of young girls from Bhalukiya Palong High School, who became the district champions after just a few months of training, making their parents and the teaching body very proud, and who have now set their sights even higher.
A new sports centre used by nearly 1,000 children per week
Since July, a new centre has been open on the hill in Camp 19. Open every day, it is run like a library where the children can borrow Paris Saint-Germain and Klabu kit as well as items of sports equipment (for football, cricket, volleyball, basketball, etc.). Training sessions and tournaments are organised there, and matches are shown on the television.
Paris Saint-Germain stands out as the world's first sports club to have opened such a facility in a refugee camp. This secure sports centre is a peaceful haven, conducive to personal and physical fulfilment. More than anything, it gives these youngsters an opportunity to distract themselves from their problems through sport.
Energetically self-sufficient thanks to solar panels designed by Solarkiosk, the sports centre is made up of a club house, a sports pitch and a learning area equipped with a television.
In late September, representatives from the Club and its Endowment Fund travelled to the site to meet with the local authorities, the UNHCR and the NGO Friendship, and to chat with the teachers and children about the impact of this new facility.
ABOUT THE SITUATION
Almost a million Rohingya people, who belong to a stateless Muslim ethnic minority, have been chased out of Myanmar in successive waves of violence since the early 1990s.
ABOUT THE PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN ENDOWMENT FUND
Founded in 2013, the Paris Saint-Germain Endowment Fund gathers donations that give fresh impetus to programmes rolled out for the benefit of disadvantaged children. Through sport and its values, we look to act in a positive, dynamic and targeted way to help young people in need. In the process, we bring comfort to sick children so that they can put their illnesses to the back of their minds for a while, encourage children to help one another and stick together, offer a programme that helps adults find their feet socially and workwise, and provide comfort for people in precarious situations. The funds we collect are used to implement actions that benefit children and young adults. It is thanks to this support that we have been able to increase the number of programmes rolled out and the number of children they help.
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ABOUT KLABU
Social start-up KLABU, based in Amsterdam, creates sports clubs in refugee camps to help the refugees to rebuild their lives. Through sport, KLABU provides refugees with the necessary tools to enable them to reconnect with feelings of joy and pride.