About This Project:

We started soccer for children in 2009 with kids from the slums who were at high risk of never seeing the inside of a classroom, and higher risk for trafficking and exploitation. Our soccer team is well over 40 children now, with 18 on our top team and competing locally. Three promising Riverkids students were spotted and sent through HFCA (Happy Football Cambodia Australia) to Italy for an inter-Milan scholarship and Australia for the Homeless World Cup last year, and four players from Riverkids went to Brazil to represent Cambodia in the Homeless World Cup this year! While training is provided free, we need to pay for transport from the slums to the soccer fields for the weekly training. We also need to buy boots and shin guards for our top team so they can take part in matches. Their hard work on the pitch has helped them in so many other ways. Instead of drugs and gangs, the teenage boys are back at school or in apprenticeships. For girls, soccer is a chance to be physically active and competitive – a huge confidence boost! The discipline and teamwork our children learn through soccer helps them at school and at home. Soccer gives them confidence in their own strength and abilities, and the friendships they have made help them survive the slums.

About Riverkids:

In late 2001, the Cambodian-born adopted daughter of a Singapore family told her new parents how she had been trafficked. The rest of the children she had been with were then found and the family began building stronger ties within their communities. From these roots, Riverkids soon began and started its first site, Alexandra in 2005 followed by Blum and Railway 2, and the fourth site, Kilomet 6 in September 2010. We prevent child-trafficking and exploitation by providing education, training, health, social work and income generation programs such as kindergarten, grade school, tuition, sports, dance, arts, Get Ready, Financial Management, counseling, weekly boarding, Baby Bellies, Foodboxes and Microfinance. Our beneficiaries are infants and toddlers, children and teenagers, sex workers, HIV-positive families and business women. We aim to reach 500 children aged 16 and below by the end of 2010.