United Kingdom promotes football over violence in Honduras
The British Embassy to Honduras (based in Guatemala) has sponsored a street soccer tournament as part of a programme aimed at raising awareness and preventing violence against children and youth in Tegucigalpa.
Street Football Project
The tournament took place on October 17th and involved about 300 young people between 12 and 30 years old who live in areas of high risk, vulnerability and violence. Several teams competed from 9 am in the “San Felipe” community within the Honduran capital. All participants were from state schools and played in mixed teams.
With an investment of more than 135,000 lempiras (US$6,500) the activity was organized by the British Embassy with the support of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The event was also sponsored by the National Directorate of Youth, the Honduran National Prevention Programme, the Honduran Brewery and Aguazul.
The winners were given awards for their performance and are going to be able to implement a social project to benefit their community with the help of YMCA.
To mark the event, the British Ambassador to Honduras, Sarah Dickson, said:
“We wanted this to be a celebration of sport and it was great to see communities coming together to support their favourite teams. One of the priorities of the Embassy is to work with the authorities and civil society to eradicate the culture of violence and I firmly believe that sport is one of the best alternatives. Young people are the future of Honduras and we want to empower them to keep saying no to violence”.
Ambassador Dickson visited Tegucigalpa in a two day programme that included meetings with authorities, civil society and other donors, aimed at strengthening the political and economic relationship between the United Kingdom and Honduras.