For the fourth consecutive year, PlayOnside arrange the Mingalarbar Mae Sot League. A  football tournament for Burmese migrant children displaced in Thailand. With 22 schools participating in seven different categories, the tournament brings the whole community together. Schools from Phop Phra in the south of Tak Province, come all the way to Mae Sot, to meet the friends and peers and to play and learn together with the children from the Migrant Learning Centers in Mae Sot. Finally, after a year’s rest due to construction our football field at Mae Tao Clinic so we are able to play four games at the same time. This means that every Saturday, from November to February, the remote field in the outskirts of Mae Sot, is filled with hundreds of smiles and colorful uniforms.

We are constantly trying to improve the quality of our program, and a major component of the learning process for the players, is the PlayOnside Life-Skills Curriculum. Through the nine weeks of this years tournament, we are focusing on three different topics. Environmental Awareness, Social Inclusion and Self Awareness. Prior to the tournament we developed a Life-Skills Handbook, for the coaches to implement during the week before the weekend games. The weekend games and homework related to the topic of the week, and the teams get points for their performance through the Life-Skills program, and not ponly through the results of the football game. This development has been a great attribution to the tournament and the children and the coaches are embracing the new format.

Another highly successful change for this tournament, has been to mix certain teams from different schools. Some schools did not have enough students for certain categories, so we connected different schools to ensure everyone who wanted had the chance to participate. This small change has had a tremendous benefit on the social inclusion and the network building of the children, they are becoming friends throughout the tournament, and it has significantly reduced the competitiveness between the schools. Children from different communities, schools and ethnic group play together in between the games, and the tournament has been a powerful platform for social integration between the different migrant communities.

The tournament goes into its final stages, finishing off with a closing ceremony in February. We are so happy about the engagement from the children, parents and schools, who have all contributed to making the fourth edition of the Mingalarbar Mae Sot League the best PlayOnside tournament ever.