The Rohingya people from Myanmar/Burma are arguably the "
most persecuted people on earth."
They have been made stateless in their own country and have been subject to extreme ethnic-based violence and discrimination perpetrated by sectors of the Burmese government and community. Many are forced to flee their homeland and many arrive in Malaysia.
In Malaysia, Rohingya refugees are allowed to stay for now, but they have no health care, education, security or employment support. They are sometimes extorted by local criminals, and children have been kidnapped and sent into slavery or tenured work situations.
Throughout this ordeal, the Rohingya have not resorted to organised violence even in their own defence.
With so few resources, in an effort to rebuild their community and to reach out to non-Rohingya communities, community leaders have developed the Rohingya Football Club.
This is seen as a non-violent, accessible and socially-interactive initiative which helps the broad Rohingya community find itself again. The RFC is a source of pride, expression, dignity, focus and engagement which uses the powerful medium of football to reach across the bridges of misunderstanding, ignorance and prejudice.
The Kick Project's RFC program is an
official partner with the UN Sustainable Development Goals program.
Our Advisors
Many overseas projects can be caught out when a poor misunderstanding of the lay of the land can lead to the wrong people being involved and less than effective program design.
We have been closely advised by Dr Gerhard Hoffstadter, an anthropologist from the University of Queensland and an expert in SE Asian migration and Rohingya issues on this program.
We have also, in consultation with Dr Hoffstadter, worked closely with R Vision, a KL-based online news outlet run by and for Rohingya people, the only such outlet providing news exclusively in the Rohingya language.
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The funds raised here will be used to kit out the team in custom uniforms, designed by them.
The uniform consists of shirts, shorts and socks.
The kit is priced at a slightly higher rate than might otherwise be possible, as the apparel is being supplied by certified ethical, fair trade manufacturers, based in Australia.
The RFC is a squad of 30 players
This will allow the team to carry the Rohingya Football Club name into all its friendly games and into the league competition it has just entered.
The uniform kit out is part of a larger program to help build the RFC and to help it become well established and functional in its own right.
This program, while being funded via this source, will be incorporated into a wider football for development program run by The Kick Project, which is a registered charity in Queensland.
As noted above, the wider program is an
official partner of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals program.
The major obstacle I foresee is that the Rohingya community is simply unable to utilise whatever support we can deliver with maximum effectiveness. This is because the community has so little infrastructure that it is difficult to carry out even simple operations.
I feel we can meet this challenge by keeping the project relatively small and focussed on the RFC initiative.
Another problem is working internationally. Clearly, systems are different and communications can break down across the culture and language divide.
With my experience working with social justice groups and issues over the decades, I feel I have the tools to deal with such issues. I have contacts in Australian academia and in larger international NGOs (see below) who are well versed in the issues pertaining to the Rohingya in Malaysia. They have helped develop this program and remain available to deliver advice and feedback.
Finally, a problem is in the fact that many Australians and others are unaware of the plight of the Rohingya. lack of awareness makes fund raising challenging. I hope to build awareness via this and other platforms.