The DiploMatch, an epic charity football match between the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, UN Ambassadors, high-level UN officials, acclaimed Sierra Leonean author Ishmael Beah and other grand personalities, took place on April 21st.

The goal of the DiploMatch was to raise enough money to finance a community tournament in Sierra Leone; we surpassed that goal by raising more than $20,000.

We are thankful for the support of the UNSG, the two Captains, UNASG Heraldo Muñoz and Ambassador Wenaweser, as well as the handfuls of high-ranking officials and Ambassadors who came out in support of our work!

The DiploMatch was sponsored by Hummel, Play31’s Karma partner. Find out more here.

Podio gives our volunteers a better opportunity to communicate internally and organize all or events.

We’re powered by Podio – a new type of collaboration software where sharing, communicating and getting work done takes place on one online platform – fully customizable through the unique ability to create your own apps”

As you might have noticed (from our non-stop postings about it), we recently won what we wouldn’t hesitate to label the most prestigious award in the Sports for Development world, the Beyond Sport Award. We are immensely honored with the award and aside from being a bona fide stamp of approval, we also consider it an obligation to continuously work on improving what we do. That’s why we will invest some of the award money towards improving our monitoring and evaluation system.
Beyond Sport just sent us their jury’s motivation in selecting Play31 and we thought you might find it interesting. Here is a blurb:
“To have moved from a Shortlisted project in the 2010 Best New Project category to Winner of the 2011 Sport for Conflict Resolution Award is an absolutely outstanding achievement. Standing out among over 400 projects from more than 120 countries and territories is not easy but the Beyond Sport Judges were particularly impressed with Play 31′s five-step process that has had impressive success bringing together villages ripped apart and turned against each other through the civil war in Sierra Leone.
Not only does Play 31 exhibit a process that shows sport’s power in a reconciliation process in its purest form, the way the organisation relies on community leaders and local NGOs is truly exemplary”.

Play31 was officially founded in New York City in 2008. The organization, however, was conceived on one of the very last days of 2007 in Moyamba Town in southern Sierra Leone. Here, Jakob Lund met three boys at a guest house who asked him if he wanted to play football with them. When the four of them went on to play, Jakob realized the boys’ football was a complete wreck. “It was a plastic ball with a big hole in it, which made it seem more like a plastic bag,” Jakob says thinking back. When he presented them with a new ball, it was the boys’ happiness and enthusiasm that spurred the idea of what would soon become Play31. “All kids should at least have the right to a football, I thought,” says Jakob. “I thought about how my life would have been without that basic piece of equipment and I did not like the thought at all. So I decided there and then to start an organization that would provide children in Sierra Leone with footballs. After having discussed the idea with friends and colleagues in Sierra Leone, however, we soon realized that the Beautiful Game can be used for more than “just” bringing joy. It can also bring people together and foster reconciliation and a sense of, as they say in Sierra Leone “One World.” That’s what Play31 is today. But it all started with these three little boys and their ball.”

In November 2011, Jakob went back to Moyamba and searched for the boys at the same guest house. He found two of them there–the last one had gone off to school in a neighboring town. “It was actually a little emotional to see them again,” Jakob says about the meeting. “I don’t know them well at all and yet they ended up determining what I would go on to spend my time on. They were the inspiration for everything that Play31 has accomplished since then.” The two pictures are taken almost exactly four years apart. Since 2007, the boys have grown into young men. And the initial idea has grown into Play31, which has reached more than 50,000 people in Sierra Leone, bringing together people torn apart by war and educating children and adults; women and men about their rights and about peaceful conflict resolution.

Thursday night in Cape Town, South Africa, Play31 was awarded the prestigious Beyond Sport Award in the category Sport for Conflict Resolution. The winners were selected by a jury consisting of Archbischop Desmond Tutu, former Prime Minister Tony Blair and others.

The prize includes both a monetary reward and a business package consisting of, among other things, consultancy from PWC, which will help Play31 further develop the organization.

Best in the World

Founder of Play31, Jakob Silas Lund, says: “it’s an enormous honor that Beyond Sport—the leading organization in this field—finds us to be the organization that best utilizes sport and conflict resolution globally. We have worked hard, and for very limited resources we have reached thousands of people in Sierra Leone. I’m happy and proud that our work has been recognized. We’ll use this recognition to reach even more people in the coming years.”

Beyond Sport is an organization that promotes, develops and supports the use of sport to create positive social change across the world. Read more here: www.beyondsport.org

Workshops on rights
This year, we chose to have workshops in the districts where we usually plan football tournaments – some for entire communities and some specifically about children and children’s rights.

The purpose of these workshops is to create a space, which gives children the opportunity to discuss important issues such as rights and obligations with each other and with Play31’s volunteers. To many of the participants, Play31’s workshops are often the only available source to knowledge about human rights, children’s rights, conflict resolution and trauma healing.

After a Play31 workshop in the Kono district, Sia Gbetuwa, a participant from the village Kongofinja, said: “Play31 is a huge source of motivation and inspiration for our kids, and the organisation helps them become whole human beings. Knowing your rights as well as your obligations inspires an early sense of responsibility – with the children as well as with their parents”.

The next few months
We are thrilled that our rights- and reconciliation work has been carried out, even without the tournaments, which promises more conitinuity and new possibilities for Play31’s ability to reach even more people. We will, however, continue our work as usual, now the rainy season is coming to an end, and the next football tournament will be held in the Kono district this October and November.

For the second year in a row, Play31 is among the organizations nominated for a prize at the annual Beyond Sport Summit. Beyond Sport promotes sport for development activities by supporting smaller organizations.

In 2010, Play31 was nominated for the Best New Organization award; an award given to organizations that are less than two years old. Play31 was founded in NYC in October 2008 and in Denmark in August 2010. This year we are nominated in the category for the best use of sport for conflict resolution. It is an immense honor to be counted among the best organizations working in the field just one year after being considered for an award as the best up-and-coming organization.

We are extremely happy with this recognition and are determined to use it as a further catalyst to reach our goal of spreading joy and peace through football in post-conflict environments.

Since November last year, Play31’s second tournament in Kailahun District has been taking place all over the eastern-most district of Sierra Leone. We have had more than 1,000 people attending each match on average and we have, along the way, educated hundreds of boys and girl, men and women in human rights, children’s rights and conflict resolution.

Although it has been a lot of fun and games, it hasn’t all been fun and games. Two communities, Mende-Buima and Luawa Foiya, had a strenuous relationships stemming back to the war and that complicated the matches. Whereas Mende-Buima was a stronghold for the RUF rebels during the war, Luawa Foiya was controlled by the opposing Kamajors.

During the first match between the two teams, the atmosphere was not as peaceful and respectful as we like it to be. Therefore, before the return match, we organized a peace summit between the two communities, which was attended by more than 150 people, including our Play31 Peace Ambassadors. The summit ended with the signing of the very first

Play31 Peace Accord in which the parties, among other things, committed to: fair play; appreciating the mandate of Play 31, which is to spread joy and peace with football; empowering the Play31 Peace Ambassadors; and tolerance and respect on and off the field. In a closing statement, the parties agreed that: “never again shall anyone raise fist against anybody else.

This first Play31 Peace Accord is a perfect example of how we work in close cooperation with the communities to find new and sustainable solutions to the complex challenges involved in the reconciliation process. Forward ever, backwards never, and keep the balls bouncin’!

As 2011 begins, we look forward to a year full of ball-bouncing action. Our new tournament in Kailahun District is about to begin and so are the follow-up human rights workshops.
 
Looking back over 2010, our Country Manager in Sierra Leone, Pel Koroma, says that our new workshops initiative has substantially improved our program in terms of raising awareness and heightening the beneficiaries’ knowledge of human rights, children’s rights and conflict resolution. Pel has been writing reports from each of the matches and workshops and we’d like to offer you a little glimpse into some of the work we’ve done and the challenges we’ve faced recently in Kailahun District. Our most challenging match was without a doubt in Luawa Chiefdom, where the matches became too competitive and led to commotion. Pel writes:
 
“Luawa Foiya section played Mende Buima section on 13th November. Both sections were strongholds of the fighting forces during the war in Sierra Leone. Mende Buima was a Kamajor base while the military occupied Kenewa town in Luawa Foiya section. There were clashes on several occasions. Most of the former fighters who have asked for pardon are still living in these communities.
 
Mende Buima women’s team emerged victorious with a 2:0 win over the women of Luawa Foiya. Mende Buima’s boy’s team also gave a sound defeat to Luawa Foiya and the match resulted in 3:1 win. But when the men’s team took over the pitch, it became a different story. The Luawa Foiya men’s team defeated Mende Buima 2 goals to nil. This saw tempers flare up and a lot of spectators were unhappy. However, through the intervention of community leaders and Play31 Peace Ambassadors, tensions were later diffused.
 
The matches brought 251 men, 293 women, and 302 children together in the name of peace and reconciliation. Among the spectators were Section chiefs, Town chiefs, Mammy Queens and a host of other traditional dignitaries. They all dined together after the matches, and danced at the night’s free-of-cost disco.”
 
This account shows that while football certainly is the Beautiful Game, it can also, perhaps unsurprisingly, lead to conflict. We’re in the business of resolving and preventing conflicts and one of our biggest challenges is to make sure the energy catalyzed by our tournaments is positive and is used to further peacebuilding and unity in the communities where we work. Our Country Manager, Pel, and our cooperation with the local peacebuilding organization, Fambul Tok, ensures that this challenge is met with the utmost professionalism and intimate understanding of the context in which we work. Thorough sensitizations processes as well as follow-up activities and workshops help us achieve our goal.
 
We thank all of our supporters for their contributions over the last year and we promise to work with continued dedication and resilience towards consolidating peace and tolerance in Sierra Leone.

We’re proud to announce that we have successfully educated Play31’s first ever generation of Peace Ambassadors. The Peace Ambassadors are selected for their leadership potential or leadership positions: some are young kids and others are Chiefs or Mami Queens. They all go through workshops with a curriculum consisting of children’s rights, peaceful conflict resolution, trauma healing and other issues that are relevant to them and their communities in the post-war situation they find themselves in.

At the end of a long day of training, Play31 staff Pel Koroma said: “they were too excited when we talked about their rights. Many of these people didn’t even know they have rights to begin with.” Commenting on the mix of children and grown-ups at the workshops, Pel said: “everyone was so active and there were great discussions between the groups.” One of the most powerful aspects was the trauma healing sessions. “Many of these people never thought of themselves as traumatized but they recognized the symptoms we brought up during the workshop. We talked about ways to support each other and about how important it is to just listen to one another,” said Pel.

The Peace Ambassadors will go on to share their knowledge and practical skills with their peers and the goal is to make all the communities where we are present more aware about both their basic human rights as well as ways to deal with conflict and trauma. One of the reasons why war broke out in Sierra Leone was the massive violations of political, social, and economic human rights and building a strong civil society that is cognizant of their rights will help embolden the defense against bigotry, exploitation, and those who try to promote violence.

As such, once again, football proves to be a really, really fun way of engaging in issues that are very serious.