At last month’s OFC Women’s Olympic Football Qualifier between PNG and New Zealand, both countries joined together to promote a host of social responsibility messages aimed at the PNG communities.

The match fell on International Women’s Day and the 3000 strong crowd were thoroughly engaged and entertained by an exciting match played out by two squads full of female role models.

The match was broadcast live across the country on EMTV and PNGFA and OFC used the opportunity to promote and stress issues of social responsibility in line with OFC’s Football for Life program.

Football for Life is an OFC Presidential programme which aims to use football as a medium to directly assist and raise awareness of key issues affecting people within the Oceania family.

 

Launched in 2007 this programme has helped deal with the Tsunami relief effort for the Solomon Islands, empowerment of women in Pacific society and at the Women’s Olympic Football Qualifier in PNG – HIV/Aids awareness and domestic violence prevention.

 

Dame Carol Kidu –  PNG’s first ever female cabinet minister – gave a pre match speech in which she talked about issues of promoting the family and importance of community in PNG and HIV awareness and prevention.

 

She also talked about the significance of the game falling on International Women’s Day and how women worldwide were acknowledging their strengths and the struggles and challenges which they have faced.

 

She also discussed the importance of football and sport in general in helping raise awareness of these issues.

 

Dame Kidu said that as well as discussing the negative social messages we need to acknowledge the socially pro-active messages and the things that we are doing well.

 

“It’s important to start promoting positive social messages also such as importance of family, importance of community and importance of grandparents.” she said.

 

“With a lot of the work I do in social development areas we are hoping to influence an incremental change in mindsets.

 

“Sporting events are a great platform to gain attention. Sport is the best way to intervene because it is something that unites people across all kind of barriers.”

 

Football is used as a tool to break down barriers, promote self-esteem, and can teach life skills and healthy behaviour.

 

Both teams gathered in front of an HIV Awareness banner before kick off and joined together to help raise the community’s awareness.

 

In conjunction with Football for Life OFC has created a dedicated account to finance various ventures to provide humanitarian relief, make financial contributions to humanitarian organizations and invest in football development and the promotion of sports related youth activities—in short, to fulfil football’s responsibility to society as a whole.

 

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS, or UNAIDS, is the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV epidemic.

 

UNAIDS’ mission is to lead, strengthen and support an expanded response to HIV and AIDS that includes preventing transmission of HIV, providing care and support to those already living with the virus, reducing the vulnerability of individuals and communities to HIV and alleviating the impact of the epidemic.

 

Football for Life will harness the power of football to help create better standards of living for the people of Oceania.