Sansiri's youth football programme bears fruit
FOR THE past seven years the Sansiri Academy has been providing free football lessons for young players. Now it is seeing the result, as many have become members of the youth national team - and an inspiration for more to join the programme.
Srettha Thavisin, president of Sansiri Plc, said the Sansiri Academy now has five locations providing lessons from professional coaches for youngsters aged from seven to 15 – at Rama II, Prachachun, Bang Na, Ramindra and Phuket.
The programme offers classes every weekend for more than 4,500 members.
Niti Sirichan, 12, was one of the youngsters who joined the academy three years ago after her father heard about the programme from a friend.
“I also learned football at school. But the professional coaches at Sansiri Academy taught me much about tactics that developed my experience for both the school and the youth national team,” she said.
Nathawadee Pramnak, 14, joined to play youth football in Vietnam this year, and said that she too learned much about tactics from the academy’s coaches.
Natthapol Srithanyalaksana is father of two children, aged 10 and 13, at Sansiri Academy at Prachachun. He too heard about the programme from a friend and took along his pair of kids to train with the professionals and decided to devote more free time to sport.
“We have an average of 200 children a day come along to join this programme. They separate into three groups starting at 7am to 10am every Saturday and Sunday,” Somrit Ornsomchit, Sansiri Academy’s coach and programme manager, said.
Most children get the practice and learn tactics that inspire them to be the best football players. The experience also opens an opportunity for them to pass examinations for schools offering scholarships for kids with experience in sport, he said.
“Because of the results of the Sansiri Academy programme, we plan to increase the number of academy locations from the current five – taking our expansion nationwide,”
Sansiri Plc president Srettha said.
The company is also extending its corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes for young people into education and health.
The “Iodine Please” campaign is one programme launched three years ago and still going. It promotes the raising of awareness of low iodine consumption among young people,
which can lead to slow intellectual development.
“We are still working with Unicef to promote ‘Iodine Please’ and its education for children because we believe that through the best health and the best education we can open
opportunities for disabled people to stand by themselves,” he said.
It will focus on education, health and sport, and after running for three years, will have the distinction of being the longest cooperative programme involving the United Nations agency and a Thai corporation. The cooperative effort aims to inspire other companies to come up
with sustainable CSR projects that could concentrate on other areas.
Internationally, Unicef has joint projects with leading companies like IKEA.
Srettha said that aside from the donations received, the new programme showed Sansiri’s commitment to developing the quality of children’s lives and protecting their rights.
The company began this commitment within its own corporate structure.
It provides rooms for female staff who have to breastfeed babies, and a policy against the hiring of child labour.
Sansiri was recently awarded the "Breastfeeding Model in Workplace 2013" shield of honour by HRH Princess Srirasmi. The project is backed by relevant government agencies including the Labour Ministry’s Department of Labour Protection and Welfare, the Public Health Ministry’s Department of Health and the Foundation of the Thai Breastfeeding Centre. The project has been promoting the establishment of a “Breastfeeding Corner in the Workplace” since 2006.
Today, more than 906 leading companies have adopted this policy and Sansiri Plc is the first and only Thai property developer that has received this prestigious shield of honour.
Srettha said the country had many social problems, but Sansiri wanted to concentrate its efforts on children.
“If we have quality children, the country will have sustainable growth in the long term. That is why we focus on children for our CSR programme,” he said. “CSR is not about publicity.
It is about a total outcome for society. “It took us more than 10 years to achieve stable business growth and now it’s time to return benefits to society. We hope this will be an example for other corporations – to do anything to improve our society,” Srettha said.
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