Rohingya: From Genocide Victims to Safeguarding Children
October 26, 2019. The Asian Football Confederation and CAC initiative to benefit Rohingya refugees located in the Kutapalong refugee camp is nearly one year old. Supported greatly by the English FA, the BFF, and the UNHCR, we have conducted three separate trainings to Rohingya refugees from 25 different areas of the camp to empower them to become football coaches who will look after the nearly 10,000 children that are directly in their care. It’s a concept called Community-Based Protection, the idea that community members are best able to look after one another.
“As a victim of genocide, we the Rohingya want to improve our nation through football. This program helps us to ensure the protection of children. ” – Mohammed Amin
This latest training, conducted by CAC Chief Executive Brian Suskiewicz, FA Coach Taff Rahman, and West Ham United Academy coach Liton Zaman reached a key new milestone. Because of the consistent work with the same group of Rohingya coaches and their willingness to embrace our coaching methodology, the coaches are now more freely opening up regarding their experiences and their future goals. We were able to conduct a full day of Child Safeguarding education, using CAC curriculum games to illustrate children’s rights while they made key promises to protect the children in their care.
“We can show the whole world we are a civil nation and can educate and protect children with fun football.” – Mohammed Ismael
Please watch this world premier explaining our initiative and Community Based Protection.
Initiatives such as this one take a sustained effort over many months and years in order to create long-lasting impact. It is an honor to have a multi-stakeholder partnership with five organizations who are committed to creating this impact. We will continue to mentor these Rohingya refugees through 2020 through coaching education to create Community Based Protection as well as ongoing support through equipment donations
27 Photos from Kutapalong refugee camp
For more information or to support this initiative please email:
Mohammed Amin and Mohammed Ismael
All-Star team impacts Bangladeshi and Rohingya
This past month CAC headlined phase two of our Bangladesh initiative as the Official Social Responsibility Partner of the Asian Football Confederation. Along with professional coaches from the English FA, Chief Executive Brian Suskiewicz delivered coaching education and Football Fun Festivals in three locations in Bangladesh, including the Kutapalong Rohingya Refugee camp, home to nearly 1,000,000 individuals including 500,000 children.
“We are using football to ensure and protect the rights of some of the most vulnerable individuals, children in refugee camps and underserved Bangladeshi children throughout the country.” – Brian Suskiewicz, CAC CEO
This initiative provides grassroots coaching expertise to both Bangladeshi and Rohingya coaches, aligning with CAC’s new Community Empowerment to Ensure Human Rights Guiding Principles, which were released on World Refugee Day. In addition to the aforementioned refugee camp, training sites included the town of Cox’s Bazar and the Bangladesh Football Federation House in the capital, Dhaka.
Along with Alena Moulton, Kevin Coleman, Taff Rahman, and Anwar Uddin, the CAC/English FA team educated 174 coaches who will impact 21,390 children, while also hosting three Football Fun Festivals around the country. This is the second phase, concluding the first year of the initiative. Further plans will continue the partnership well into 2020. Other partners include the Jaago Foundation and the UNHCR in Bangladesh. Of special note, the Jaago Foundation had 50+% female participation during this initiative, which was the first time over 90% of them had played football!
For further information, please read the project overview from December, 2018 or contact CAC at .
CAC Publishes “Community Empowerment to Ensure Human Rights Guiding Principles”
June 20, 2019. On World Refugee Day, Coaches Across Continents is releasing our Community Empowerment to Ensure Human Rights Guiding Principles. CAC’s decade of experience in using Purposeful Play to empower communities to recognize, protect, and ensure all human rights is now bolstered by these guiding principles which will help our partnerships in more than 60 countries.
CAC Community Empowerment to Ensure Human Rights- Guiding Principles
“Community Empowerment is the idea that a community best understands the individuals within that community, and that the best people to take care of one another are each other.” – Chief Executive Brian Suskiewicz
CAC uses Purposeful Play and Education Outside the Classroom in 60+ countries to Empower Communities to Recognize and Ensure Human Rights.
Developed from our decade of experience in communities around the world, as well as strategic partnerships with the UNHCR and UNICEF, these Guiding Principles for Community Empowerment to Ensure Human Rights provide the opportunity for all organizations to learn best practices in both emergency and non-emergency situations.
To help explain the importance of these guidelines, Chief Executive Brian Suskiewicz presented on our Virtual Learning podcast this month. Click here to listen.
For more information on these guidelines, please contact us at
World Refugee Day is June 20th. A special thanks to these CAC partners who work with refugees and internally displaced persons every day:
- Asian Football Confederation / BFF / UNHCR benefitting Rohingya Refugees, Bangladesh
- ANERA, Lebanon
- Fútbol Más, France
- Fútbol Más, México
- Girl Determined, Myanmar
- Kabubu, France
- Kicken Ohne Grenzen, Austria
- Palestine Sports for Life, Palestine
- Reclaim Childhood, Jordan
- Soccer Without Borders, Uganda and United States
Beginning in Bangladesh
December 10, 2018. Dhaka, Bangladesh. This past week we implemented programming through our partnership with the Asian Football Confederation. We are in Dhaka, the capital of the 8thmost populous country in the world. In addition to the AFC, we are also working with the Bangladesh Football Federation and the Jaago Foundation (UNSDG17: Partnerships for the Goals). Our work will benefit thousands of underprivileged children throughout Bangladesh by empowering Jaago volunteers to use CAC’s Education Outside the Classroom methodology and curriculum.
We believe, football (sports) is the one of the most powerful tools to bring a positive impact for any nation. This is something, which represents youth, energy & friendship all together. – Jaago Foundation
With a strong background in classroom education and extracurricular activities for disadvantaged children, the Jaago Foundation is a natural partner. 42 volunteers came to Dhaka from across the country, and we implemented a curriculum that will address UNSDG #3: Good Health and Well-Being and UNSDG #4: Quality Education; while also implementing a strong program to address Safeguarding Children in Sport. This is especially relevant, especially after our global work last month for Universal Children’s Day.
“I am a passionate traveler, I often go to rural areas in Bangladesh to teach tribal children. They don’t speak Bengali but through football I connect. Now, I can teach them health and lifestyle through CAC games as football is a global language.” – Rafat (Kazi): Jaago, Dhaka.
Stay tuned next week as our AFC/BFF partnership will bring us into the world’s largest refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, home of over 900,000 refugees including half a million children under the age of 17.
Corporate Social Responsibility Partnership, Tanzania
February 26, 2014. It was Monday 17th of Feb 2014. I arrived at Benjamin Mkapa Secondary School and all the teachers asked me where is Brian Mingle Mingle? It is simple question to me, I answered that I am Impact coach from Tanzania country and CAC decided to choose me to represent in running this program and they believe one another teachers from your group will also be Impact coach.
After few minutes of introduction why Tanzania got the opportunity to run this program for refresh day from the Group of Champions from Standard Chartered Bank Tanzania (SCB), Juanita Mramba represented SCB to open the refresh days in Dar [es Salaam]. She addressed more than 50 teachers, 10 champions from SCB and 7 coaches from Tanzania Football Federation who coach children in different clubs in Dar. They said SCB had their goal to reach 15,000 children at the end of this year. So the teachers are responsible to implement this knowledge back to their school.
I started our program by giving the chance to the teachers to review the games they learned last year. They remembered the games although they forget what we learned through those games. I am the one who tried to explain each game and how to connect what we learn to our daily life and address that CAC are using their curriculum to change the life of children through soccer. And I also explained that we are using females as the role models in order to empower females in our country. After two days in Dar, on the last day, CEO (Liz Lloyd) from SCB came to see what is going on and participated in playing Mingle Mingle (see photo). At the closed celebration few champions, teachers and me, we got gifts for hard work during the training.
I then went to Arusha to meet with 36 teachers. It was fantastic session because when I arrived in Arusha School, I saw the teachers had revised all the games themselves and explained what we learned in each game. Arusha is the best for the teachers to run this program. They are ready to run this program.
When I was leaving Arusha at airport it happened one problem with Airport Official who wanted to know why our balls travel with air. So it took time to explain the types of balls [One World Futbols] but then they agree to carry my bag in the flight.
Last I finished with 46 teachers in Mwanza, which also is very fun to me to run this program alone as Impact coach. I thank CAC and SCB to trust me as a Tanzania citizen to run this program on behalf of Coaches Across Continents.
Community Impact Coach, Nico Pota, who was part of our very first program in Kigoma, Tanzania in 2008, has been instrumental in every program we have run in the country during the last 6 years. Over the course of this week Nico ran refresher courses in three locations on behalf of SCB Tanzania and CAC. Sustainability in action. CSR in action. A beautiful partnership and an incredible role model and member of the CAC family. Thank you Nico!