How helping children to play sport can change lives in Palestine

It’s an age-old adage that sport brings people together no matter the circumstances, no matter the boundaries, and no matter the cultures that exist in a country. But what happens in circumstances such as war, when so many people do not get an opportunity to participate in sport? Palestine Sports For Life is an organisation set up in 2010 to try to bring kids together and make them forget about their day-to-day lives and the fact that the country around them is in turmoil.

“We work across Palestine, including West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza,” says Tamara Awartani, founder and executive director of Palestine Sports For Life. “And we work with different communities empowering young people, like young women, older women, and children, in addition to working with the schools. We also help build the capacity of teachers and social workers in how to use sports for development. It’s not just the technical aspect of sports, regular physical education classes, but rather make sure that they can also use the power of sports to change lives, basically.”

“We also run different events while tackling the different issues that are facing the different communities through sports. We also do different educational programmes, free for the communities, especially in the vulnerable and marginalised areas.”

The aspiration for Palestine Sports For Life is to reach between 1000 males and 1000 females. They usually focus on students, mostly male, some female, and also older women keen to see what life could be like for their young girls and boys through playing sport. There are about 500 coaches, trainers and counsellors within the school systems, and the idea is to run between five to 10 programmes a year for different communities across Palestine.

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“Of course, we started really small because it was a local organisation. It started because we’re athletes, so we got a good reputation [through work], and also, we were able to spread the word and awareness about sports for development. It took a lot of time and effort, like everything else that you want to start from scratch, but the good thing is it’s growing, and we’re still eager to grow even more, not only in Palestine but also in the region to spread the message of the power of sport.”

Irish people probably know Palestine Sports for Life through its connection with Bohemians, whose away jersey was designed to spread awareness of the organisation’s work and raise funds for sports equipment for its project in Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps. This project aims to empower young girls and boys to realise that they have a right to play and to help educate them and develop life skills.

The Tulkarem camp was established in 1950 and is estimated to host more than 21,500 people in an area of just 0.18 km². More than 1,600 children attend school there.

“There are at least now three to four generations of people in those camps,” says Tamara. ”They were kept in those places because they knew they had the right to return to their homes at one point in their life. And it kept going from one generation to the other.

“So you can imagine how big the families are, and the refugee camp space is the same. So they always also have to take permission to build anything, and mostly, if it’s in an area like in West Bank, they do not have that permit to build. Even in the refugee camps, sometimes they’re so close that you open the window, you’re literally in the next home. It’s very difficult circumstances; the infrastructure is extremely bad because, again, they don’t get funding or they don’t get the proper infrastructure for sewage or water.”

Reading this may make you wonder whether sport is a huge issue when children don’t even have access to sewage or water.But the idea of bringing sports into the camps is to build leaders for the future.

“Throughout the years, we have developed many youth coaches who became leaders in their community, either in sports or in whatever they wanted to lead in. And also it empowers them and develops their life skills in different aspects as well, in different fields, because they have more self-confidence, they can present things, which are life skills that are developed throughout the years.

“They don’t get this with one session, but because they are enrolled in our programmes for years, you see that shy person is not there any more. We also have opportunities, such as educational opportunities, for them. So, for instance, 10 of our female football team got scholarships once they’re done with school to study in Qatar. So that was only provided through football, you know, that they got this educational opportunity as well to leave their homes for the first time, not even just the cities but to cross the border to a whole different country through sports. This was a big thing for them, and that was provided to them through sports, and they came back and empowered their families and their households there.”

Sports isn’t going to fix every issue in these children’s lives but, as Tamara explains, they benefit from being given an escape from the frightening and grim everyday realities around them. They meet new people and learn about cultures; some are even aware of the League of Ireland through sponsorship with Bohemians.

Sport can only be a vehicle for ideas. It can’t act on its own. But for one hour, one day, these young people can feel normal and be a part of something that could potentially change their lives.