After several months of activities being closed due to COVID-19, here in Thailand lockdown has come to an end. Although Pattani province had initially been hard hit by COVID-19, thankfully now the situation is under control. This has allowed the football project in Southern Thailand to restart last month, and children (from 8 to 13 years old- many who are from vulnerable and low-income families) who had been involved in our projects have been slowly returning.

With masks and food distribution the only form of contact with the children and their families, we are elated to have contact again. After months of being stuck at home, the children now have the opportunity to meet friends, and play football – the joy on their faces is telling! Not only the children are happy, but the parents have expressed how happy they are to have their children back at our football activities. It’s little things like this, which make it worthwhile. With new local coaches on board, SEEDS workers can slowly begin to reimplement value-based coaching as we seek to improve physical fitness and develop the skills & characters of the children and youth we work with.

As the project moves forward, we hope to expand the project’s focus again, to rural areas to help impact children and youth from at risk communities. Plans have begun as local partners identify the most needy areas to survey, and this will be the cornerstone of our community development focus through football.

SEEDS partner organisation Yayasan Tunas Aksara recently completed an 11-month program in North Lombok, Indonesia, in partnership with the INOVASI program from Australian Government’s Department for Aid and Trade (DfAT) and the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture.

The program, which ran from late January to December 2019, involved delivering full Saya Suka Membaca (SSM) training and curriculum materials, plus a “library in a box” and regular on-going mentoring to 47 teachers of grades 1-3 in 14 primary schools in North Lombok, reaching almost 800 children.

The program was sorely needed: North Lombok was hit by a severe earthquake in 2018, and most children are still learning in temporary schools with few resources. About 30% of families in the area live on less than US$1 per day, with little access to books or other opportunities to learn.

The program required huge effort and commitment from the whole SSM team, but was a great success: the program met or exceeded all of its stated goals, chief of which was a measurable improvement in learning outcomes for children being taught to read with Saya Suka Membaca.

Learn more about Saya Suka Membaca at www.sayasukamembaca.org or watch the video below:

Indonesia, in common with much of the world, is facing both a health and economic crisis from Covid-19. As with any disaster, vulnerable groups are the ones hardest hit. SEEDS, working with local partners, has already been working in coastal communities to strengthen their livelihoods through education, entrepreneurship, and environmental programs. These programs were designed to make households resilient to shocks but the scale of the COVID-19 ‘shock’ is far beyond their capacity to cope. This is why those long-term programs have been ‘put on ice’ while we support coastal communities in surviving the COVID-19 storm. 

Practically this meant selecting two of the most isolated coastal communities that we have previously worked with and that contain high proportions of residents who live in poverty or are at risk of falling into poverty. Working together with local leadership and the police force, SEEDS partners wearing PPE distributed ‘basic needs’ (rice, instant noodles, cooking oil and soap) packages to families to help them get through this emergency.  More than 400 families have so far received aid packages.

Restrictions on movements continue in West Sumatra so we were grateful to be able to distribute the aid smoothly. Our local partner, the Perahu Nusantara Foundation, is already making plans for a comprehensive needs survey in other coastal communities when restrictions begin to ease. We anticipate that one of the key needs will be providing business support to small cottage industries that have been decimated by the drop in tourism in this area. 

During the past few weeks of worldwide change from the spread of COVID-19, SEEDS partners at a nonprofit foundation in Indonesia have distributed food supplies to poor families. Many in the country are struggling to survive in midst of economic hardship related to virus response measures.

A lady who helped with the distribution said of a mother, when they arrived at her family’s home: “She cried, and was touched as we brought the donations for her and her daughter. Her daughter wished for chicken but they had no money to buy. They were so happy when we brought the chicken.” The mother hugged and kissed the SEEDS partner to thank the foundation. “First I wanted to reject it,” she said, because the virus risk was uncertain: “But then, I hugged her again.”

The food distribution was possible, in part, through charitable contributions that SEEDS supporters specifically designated for COVID-19 relief. On many occasions SEEDS workers have partnered with Southeast Asian communities in highly specialized ways—education, research, healthcare, economic development. During the crisis, though, one very important way to help has been simply to give families food they need.

It’s hard to overestimate the positive impact of sports on young people.  Sports impact youth cognitively, emotionally, socially, and physically.  Through participation on a safe and healthy team, youth learn life skills and develop character traits that will assist them when dealing with challenging seasons of life in an urban environment.  Over many months, team members also grow in decision making skills, goal setting, self-confidence, and leadership. 

SEEDs members in Thailand continue to invest in local leaders and local initiatives which will develop youth through sports.   Although the heart of sports training happens on the local futsal pitch, the wider network is an important place for training in larger groups, for strengthening inter-neighborhood relationships, and for building excitement among teams. 

Over the past several months the local futsal network that SEEDS organized several years ago came together to host its sixth annual futsal league.  Six neighborhoods contributed their assets of people, places, relationships, and skills to make the league possible.  Drawing on several years of experience, the SEEDS volunteers and local coaches worked together to create an ID system to ensure that only registered players were allowed on the field.  This innovative solution helped boost trust between coaches and players.

During the one month futsal league, the boys played four out of five rounds in two age divisions using a single round-robin format.  The fifth and final week of the league was canceled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The final round will be played when government restrictions are gradually eased toward the end of the year.   No one will forget–the teams with the most points in their division are still awaiting their trophies!

“Thank you for always encouraging us to be more critical, so that it pushes me to study harder.” A student sent this message to the SEEDS worker that teaches her ‘Speaking for Argument’ class. As a future English teacher, it is great that she appreciates being pushed to think more critically about what she sees and hears.

Some of the recently proposed laws in Indonesia are controversial and the students in the Argument class chose sides and presented arguments in group discussions. This was an opportunity to wrestle with relevant issues that affect their own country. To help them think more logically, they also studied logical fallacies and how to recognize and avoid them; inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning; and cause and effect relationships.

Particularly in a country that is almost two thirds ocean, oil spills and other environmental problems are inevitable. In the Coastal Zone Management class, graduate students studied about how to prepare for potential oil spills, methods that have been used to clean the water and the coastline, and then prepared contingency plans in groups.