SportCares participants enjoy free Festival of Football matches and clinics
Through this initiative, these youths and volunteers get opportunities to experience major sports events at the Sports Hub
SINGAPORE — Amid the National Stadium crowd who watched the Singapore Festival of Football friendly between Liverpool and Leicester City on Sunday (30 July) were youth participants from three SportCares beneficiaries.
These youths received free tickets to the football match under an initiative by the Singapore Sports Hub, Festival of Footbal presenter TEG Sport, and SportCares - the philanthropic arm of Sport Singapore that enables vulnerable individuals and persons with disabilities to experience sports.
In all, 350 tickets to four Festival of Football matches as well as 15 passes to training clinics were given to youth participants from three SportCares programmes: Saturday Night Lights football, Let’s Sepak and the SportCares-Li Foundation MultiSport programme.
One of them is 15-year-old Aloysius Chew, a avid footballer who also volunteers his time with SportCares' Saturday Night Lights, which takes underprivileged and at-risk youths off the streets on Saturday nights to give them formal football training and a healthy meal at the end of it without charge.
Being a defender, he was eager to see how Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk plays the position during the match. "It is great to get this chance to see top footballers play. It also gives me motivation to do more volunteer work so that I get more opportunities to see more football events," he told Yahoo Southeast Asia.
Another beneficiary is 22-year-old Nurul Hanisa Karim, who has been with SportCares for 10 years, going from a participant to an active youth athletics coach imparting skills to younger athletes.
"SportCares allows me to discover my own talent to teach, when I began to conduct weekly online classes for children during the COVID pandemic," she said.
"I've been a Liverpool ever since Luis Suarez played for them in the 2010s, so I'm very excited to watch them play. I usually play right-back whenever I play football, so I'll be looking out for Trent Alexander-Arnold at the game."
Second collaboration between SportCares and KASM
The initiative is the second collaboration between SportCares and Kallang Alive Sport Management (KASM), with the first being at the HSBC Singapore Rugby Sevens in April, when 80 members of the SportCares Wheelchair Rugby programme caught the fast-paced rugby action at the National Stadium.
"Whether it is providing opportunities to participate in sports clinics, to interact with sports legends or to watch live sporting action, these are unique experiences we have created by virtue of being the host venue of large-scale sporting events," said KASM chief executive officer Quek Swee Kuan.
"We plan to expand these experiences as more major sports events are hosted at the Singapore Sports Hub."
Shawn Lim, head of SportCares, hopes that these experiential opportunities can further motivate the participating children and youths to give back to the community and continue uplifting themselves.
Likewise, Tim Ho, managing director of Festival of Football organiser TEG Asia, hopes that these youths will have a meaningful time at the event, and be inspired by being able to watch top footballers up close in action.
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