The Catholic Church in Phnom Penh and football celebrity Neay Pak Mi held a charity football match between a disabled team and a celebrity at the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Stadium to generate donations for crippled people on October 7.
The tournament features the Deaf Youth Football Team and the All-Season Flower Football Team of Celebrity (a Cambodian comedy team) aimed at encouraging people with disabilities to meet celebrities and raise some funds to support people with disabilities, said Mr. Sarouen San, a coordinator of the Deaf Youth Team of the Catholic Church, on October 10.
Mr. San said that there are 26 deaf players, while the disabled supporters and supporters from the church bring a total of nearly 300 people, including a large crowd of others.
H.E. Em Chanmakara, Secretary of State for the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans, and Youth Rehabilitation and Secretary General of the Disability Action Council, officially opened the sports event.
He said that the competition is to promote people with disabilities, to provide rights and freedoms without discrimination under the umbrella of peace and development in all areas, and to make people with disabilities go into society in order to become an inclusive society.
The church’s coordinator continued that this was the first event for the players, and at the end of the match, the deaf players happily won the trophy. "It was a great success for them."
Mr. Lengchan Socheat Chhat, Executive Director of Chhat Diamond Shop and the initiator of this competition, said that he always supports this group of deaf people with small group competitions every week so that deaf youth can participate more in society; for this, he collaborated with Mr. Pak Mi to create a national event.
He added that our main goal is to let the public know that deaf youth have the same abilities as normal people, to raise their values without discrimination, and to encourage the disabled to not think that they have been abandoned.
"More or less, we want other philanthropists to start turning to each other for financial, food, and material assistance to organizations that are in need of help to sustain the provision of care to people with disabilities," Socheat added.
Mr. Chanra Chaem, called Neay Pak Mi, a comedian and the captain of the all-Season Flower football team, said that it is an opportunity for the group to be disabled with celebrities who are their idols play together in the national stadium and have a lot of viewers through live broadcasts on social media, which makes them proud.
"As a result, we see their smiles, especially when they win trophies. They slept and holed it, the set tear in happy and excited. That is what our team wants.” He exclaimed.
In addition, his all-Season Flower team will also be planning a tournament with the blind in mid-November to promote the blind ability and want to experience the darkness and hardships of the disabled people, he added.
According to Mr. San, the money raised is about 4,500 US dollars from local philanthropists to fund the event, and the rest will be distributed to institutions that are caring for people with disabilities.
According to a September 2021 report by the United Nations in Cambodia on Support for Persons with Disabilities and Response to COVID-19, 80% of communes nationwide cite the presence of persons with disabilities in Cambodia at 125,217. - Kagnha Keo
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