Our Focus Areas
Youth Empowerment
For us, Youth Empowerment is defined as helping youth
1) enroll in school;
2) further education opportunities;
3) secure sustainable livelihood and employment;
4) lead change in their communities;
5) participate in social entrepreneurship;
6) achieve their dreams, goals, and ambitions.
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Disaster response
In 2014, the Asian Football Confederation partnered with Gawad Kalinga in building the AFC Village project, AFC's response to victims of Typhoon Haiyan.
GK developed the community, which was built around a football pitch, using football to provide trauma and play therapy to the children and parents affected by one of the worst storms to ever make landfall.
Social Entrepreneurship
In order to provide livelihood to youth and to also raise funds to develop and expand SipaG's program, SipaG founded together with French volunteers PÁG-ON, a social enterprise that makes sports equipment out of sustainable materials such as bamboo and up-cycled goods.
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Peace & Conflict Resolution
SipaG also uses sports to bridge communities and tackle conflict in war-torn areas in Mindanao. In these areas, football is used to promote peace and to make a positive impact not only on the youth but also on their parents.
Values & Life Skills
As a leadership program, SipaG is focused into individually mentoring kids to lead better lives. We believe that strong leadership is anchored on a solid foundation of good values, positive beliefs, and the development of critical life skills.
Sports is used to experientially teach children virtues and values, but we also tackle developing in our participants self confidence, the ability to speak up with a strong voice, breaking limiting belief systems, responsibility, commitment, and how to set and meet goals. We do not employ a one size fits all approach as our multi-community program requires that we tailor our interventions according to the needs and issues of each child and community.
Child protection
We also use sports to engage the communities that we serve to come up with their own child protection policies. We educate children as well as parents and adults on the rights of a child, child protection policies of GK, as well as how to report any violations to such rights and policies.
Gender equality
We target that at least 25% of our participants are girls. We encourage and promote that females should take leadership roles within the program and organization as coaches, referees, players, and mentors.
