Our Work
Philippines
Project Six Foundation has a strong affiliation with the Philippines and has conducted several coaching tours over the last 2 years.
The primary objective of P6F in the Philippines is to deliver sustainable sports and physical education programs into orphanages and schools in impoverished and disadvantaged regions and deliver coaching and sports clinics across the regions.
So far, we have delivered free coaching workshops and clinics to over 200 coaches and teachers, and to over 800 children and delivered to over 20 schools and orphanages over the last 2 years. We have also donated several Hot Shot Tennis kits (courtesy of Tennis Australia) and basketball equipment to these areas.
Locations have included, Urdaneta, Pozorrubio (Pangasinan), Agoo (La Union), Quezon City, Santa Rosa (Laguna), and Makati (Manila).
Cambodia
At the end of 2018, Founder and Director of Project Six Foundation, Daniel Buberis spent 3 days coaching children from the Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang Mission (pictured below).
Project Six Foundation have since made a long term commitment to the Mission to help raise funds to develop sustainable sports, coaching, and physical education programs to encourage physical activity, engagement, learning and social inclusion.
Read the incredible stories below of these three amazing children as written by Borja Barreras, a volunteer and project coordinator at Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang.
The Stories and Faces of Battambang
Kim Suo
Kim Suo was born in the year 2002 in the district of Bovel. He was the second of three children of a couple that had been forced to migrate to Thailand in search of work and had left their kids at home under the supervision of several neighbours. The three kids had basically grown up by themselves. They walked around the village, visiting friends and neighbours, eating what they were offered and spent their time carrying out small tasks for those neighbours, such as cleaning or going to the market.
When the Outreach team of the Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang came across Kim Sou’s house in 2013, they found an 11-year-old boy with what happened to be a massive tumour in his left leg.
Kim Suo was then offered the opportunity to go live in the Arrupe Center, where he would receive food, a shelter, an education, medical check ups and support and, most importantly, a family. He was able to recover quickly thanks to his sacrifice and power of will. He worked hard to catch up with the grades he had missed in school and managed to pick up the rhythm quite quickly thanks to the support of his “new siblings” who helped him integrate in the center, in school and in the Prefecture’s activities.
Since the day he arrived, Kim Sou has stood out due to his extraordinary physical condition, power of will, perseverance and competitive character. He has excelled in every sport including football, wheelchair basketball, tennis, wheelchair racing and swimming, and most importantly has found his voice and escape through it, finding absolute happiness when he plays. Kim Sou was the winner of the biggest race in Cambodia (Angkor Wat Half Marathon, Siem Reap) for two consecutive years, competing in the absolute category at the age of 16, and has been a key player for Cambodian’s National Wheelchair Basketball Team in an international tournament celebrated on July 2018 in Bali.
Kim Sou now has a new responsibility. His younger brother, Seth, has recently joined another of the welcome centres of the APB (Lidy House). The children’s mother is not able to look after him anymore and, in June 2018, brought him to the centre.
Sameth
One of the most recent additions to the center of Arrupe is Sameth. Sameth the oldest of five siblings, from a rural village in the outskirts of Battambang. He grew up as part of a humble family, which was completely destructured. His father is an alcoholic who in several occasions has physically abused his mother, and his younger sister has an intellectual disability.
Furthermore, his family could not allow themselves to send their kids to school. Instead, they helped in farming, taking care of the cows and with chores around the house.
In June of 2017, Sameth became another victim of the antipersonnel mines still exploding in Cambodia. Sameth was walking his cows one day when he came across a shinny, piece of metal.
Days later, the Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang’s Outreach team came across a publication of Facebook with the story of an eleven year old boy who had just suffered a mine accident and was in the Emergency Hospital of Battambang. The team went to visit Sameth to decide a plan of action to help him. Before everything else, they scheduled for an operation to remove the remaining ordanande in his eyes, face and body, and prepared a series of follow-up appointments with eye doctors so they could clean his eyes.
Then in October 2017, Sameth joined the Arrupe Center where he has found friends and family, where he has had the opportunity to go to school, learn English, play sports, travel and look at the future with brighter eyes and more hope. Sameth is full of energy that is sometimes difficult to channel, but has found in football an excellent way to channel that energy into great values such as friendship, respect and company with his teammates.
Toy
The region of Pailin, province bordering Thailand, is one of the most heavily mined areas, with anti personnel mines and unexploded remnants of war, of the country. Unfortunately, many of these mines have a name and surname, such as that of Tik Toy, a 14-year-old kid who in 2014 stepped on one of them while looking for mushrooms less than a kilometer from his house and lost his left leg just above the knee.
When the Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang’s Outreach team heard of Toy, they organized to go visit him at the hospital with Father Kike. When Father Kike entered the Battambang Provincial Hospital to meet Toy for the first time, Toy received him with a big smile.
There was no trace of resentment or self-pity on his face, as if the essence of his life hadn’t changed due to the accident. At the time, Toy was very happy to receive visitors that would take him out of the hospital routine. The hardest moments of pain had already passed and all he was looking for was to play with someone.
Toy’s father still agitated by the event, which had taken place some days ago, insisted on telling how he had witnessed the accident. As soon as he heard the explosion, Toy’s father had run to the place where he knew Toy and other children were looking for mushrooms. As he ran, a neighbor was already coming with Toy in his arms bleeding buckets; behind him another man was carrying another unconscious child, with wounds and a completely burned back. Quickly, he took the boy and ran to the nearest road where they managed to stop a car that took them to the hospital in the city of Pailin, about 10 kilometers from Toy’s village. This humble hospital was not prepared to handle such serious cases, so the transported Toy to Battambang in an ambulance. Toy did not lose consciousness for one moment. He was operated and lost his left leg above the knee.
Toy’s family was then offered the chance to stay in the Prefecture’s health center while Toy recovered. Once recovered, Toy was offered the opportunity to join the Arrupe family. Encouraged by his family and others students of the center who had already met Toy, he gladly accepted.
He integrated himself very quickly in the center, the Prefecture and the school, always smiling and always happy. He is an extraordinary kid, hardworking, cheerful, helpful and, above all, kind. In Arrupe he has found the opportunity to go to school, to play sports, to meet new people, similar and very different to him, and has found a great opportunity to move forward, which he has embraced wholeheartedly.
