It’s been some time since our last update as things have started out so busy! Lots of new things to start the New Year. Lots of new challenges and new opportunities. Sometimes it feels like we’re overwhelmed by all the bad news coming out of everywhere, so to kick off the year of Fairplay updates we’d like to share with you some good news!

One of the big pieces of news is that Thinking of Yves (TOY) have grown as a major partner of Fairplay and are supporting the construction of the rooftop at the Payatas Sports Center, security guard house, washroom and changing facilities, and the smoothing and rubberizing paint for the futsal court. This is great news and with contact sports still some way off, it’s the best time to do the construction work. This is our final model for the Sports Center and means that we will be able to better serve the more than 200 kids who play sports with us each year, and continue hosting our youth leagues and tournaments to a larger degree, and also, once the lockdown permits, have open futsal sessions where people from outside will pay a small amount to play. This way, we can work towards making our Sports Program entirely self-sustainable year-by-year.

TOY are also supporting our internship program, where Scholars like Melanie are becoming Youth Leaders (assisting 7 or 8 younger scholars each week), and for those now interning with us part-time with helping to manage the Youth Center (Rose Ann, Rose Marie), Sports and Social & Emotional Learning (Ronalyn), the Cafe (Pia), and our Media work (Regina). Since, the lockdown, as we shared in the lockdown reports, many people throughout Metro Manila were literally not allowed to work anymore. Public transport was entirely halted for a while, and the family concerns meant many families returned to the province or had to go into hibernation in order to survive. Several of our external staff members fell into this category and had to leave.

Our older scholars have admirably stepped up and helped lead our operations. This was always the plan and what we were working towards, but now they either had more time or more capacity to actually do it – with no more time commuting to school. Most of our interns, therefore, work part-time with us in the Youth Center, Cafe, or Sports and Social Program to help run the projects and mentor the younger kids. Youth Leaders meet with their groups once a week and check on them and support them throughout the week. We’ll share more about this process in the next update as Rose Ann (Youth Center intern manager) shares more about that process and how our Youth Center is supporting our kids in this difficult time of online classes or modules at home.

StraightArrow Support Fairplay With a Van!

Also, since the previous update, Fairplay has a new van! This is a fantastic development for us. Our old van is, indeed, very old and worn down. We were kindly donated that van after the 2013 typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). With the heavy use throughout, it’s been on it’s last legs for some time, and had honourably and humbly helped us get the kids to school, to tournaments, and been a great blessing. It will still be useful at times, but now we have a long-term use for the regular transportation and, when school reopens, for the school service and going to leagues and tournaments outside of Payatas.

The van was donated by StraightArrow, who many of you may remember has been a regular partner of Fairplay for years. Two of our interns also joined an online Video Editing Course for Beginners, and are looking forward to joining more and using their skills to help our creative content department and share more stories from Payatas.

If you’re interested in joining their beginners or advanced courses for a whole variety of creative skills, from Photoshop to check out their upcoming courses at the Creative Nation Academy. They’re online courses right now, given the lockdown, so they can be joined from home too.

There are some big challenges and curveballs thrown our way, like for most of you reading this also, given the various lockdown related concerns. Online learning and the modules will also be brought up more in the next update for March, as we can explain more about how we’ve adjusted to support our Scholars in this.

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For now, though, a huge thank you to those who have helped ensure we’ve been able to care for our scholars and families through this tough time.

We hope you enjoy this update and the video, as we now aim to create a video update each month. As always, if you’d like to know more then check out the website here, and Contact Us for more info.