Changing lives thru football and golf

One of our main advocacies is to see sports as equalizing opportunities for advancement and lifting the economic status of the marginalized and the excluded. We have always believed that sport levels the playing field and should therefore be as egalitarian as possible. This is one of the reasons why this column is entitled “Sports for All”.

We were therefore delighted to have chanced upon an article (“Football changes lives”) written by Bob Guerrero (The Passionate Fan) about kids from impoverished Payatas in Quezon City, who played on January 3 under the team Payatas FC, a club run by the Fairplay For All Foundation, against members of Xavier School’s Grade School Football program. The game was a unique experience for Payatas FC which is coached by Roy Moore, who directs the Fairplay for All Foundation with Naomi Tomlinson, a fellow Brit. 

According to Guerrero, Moore says, “No matter how rich or poor they are, they can compete with teams like Xavier. We won the first half, they won the second with hard work and determination. The kids can achieve if they have the opportunity“.

Guerrero says Moore and Tomlinson launched their foundation in February 2011 just as Azkals fever was sweeping the nation. They started with 80 kids and just one ball in a barangay basketball court in Payatas. Now the team trains once a week and participates in football festivals and tournaments. Xavier coach, Ghanaian Ayi Nii Aryee of Green Archers United Globe is impressed, “These kids are very aggressive. All they do is football. They don’t have gadgets, they don’t go to movie houses, so it’s good practice for my boys also. They even communicate on the field a lot better than my boys”.

As pointed out by Guerrero, for many of the kids, football isn’t just a diversion; it’s a pathway to a better life. Payatas FC kids are mostly schoolchildren, but a few eke out a living picking garbage from the massive dumpsite that Payatas is. One of them is 12-year old goal keeper Renz de Jesus who often wakes up at two in the morning just to pick garbage. He collects some reusables and on a good day can earn P90. But more often than not, his haul is no more than P60.

Tomlinson, according to Guerrero, reveals that the football program and the drop-in center (run by Tomlinson herself) are giving many kids hope for the future, “We had kids who had failing grades before, now one kid is top of his class. We’ve got others in the top ten, top five. There’s really a big improvement in their attitude, maturity, self-discipline, self-confidence.”

If we were delighted to have chanced upon Guerrero’s article (unearthed by our assistant, Miriam Fabian), it was providential to have been introduced by National Golf Association of the Philippines (NGAP) president, former Philippine amateur golf champion, Tommy Manotoc, to Dominic Wall, director Asia-Pacific of the R&A (Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews). We hosted a lunch in Wall’s honor last week at the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club. Youth development is our main task as director of NGAP.

R & A, one of the world’s oldest and most influential golf organizations, was formed in 1754 by 22 noblemen and gentlemen in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland as the Society of St Andrews Golfers, according to www.britannica.com. It adopted its present name in 1834 by permission of the then reigning British monarch, William IV. Since 1764, its famed Old Course has been played nine holes and nine holes back, making the now standard 19-hole round.

The same website says that in the late 19th century, the R&A became the sole authority on the rules of the game in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. It maintains close contact with the US Golf Association and other national federations for purposes of unifying rules of international play.

During his visit, Wall promised R&A assistance to Philippine golf in youth development (especially among poor youth), among others. In the area of assisting poor youth and making the golf sport “less elitist”, the R&A draws its inspiration and experience from its Japeri project in Brazil, host of the 2016 summer Olympics, where golf will make its reentry.

The municipality of Japeri has, according to Brazil Foundation, one of the lowest human development indexes in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The city has no access to cultural facilities and has high rates of illiteracy and unemployment. Cultural initiatives are very sparse and rarely able to develop due to a lack of incentives in the area. In short, it has been excluded from the mainstream of all forms of development.

Next week, more on R&A’s assistance to Japeri and to golf all over the world.