THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

OH Leuven Chairman Aiyawatt extends supportive message to fans amidst COVID-19 crisis

OH Leuven Chairman Aiyawatt extends supportive message to fans amidst COVID-19 crisis

Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, chairman of Belgium's tier 2 football club Oh Leuven, wrote a supportive message for fans during the outbreak of coronavirus.

Dear OH Leuven family,

I wanted to write to you all and extend my very best wishes to you and your families during these challenging times. Wherever in the world you are reading this, the on-going pandemic will have affected people in many different ways and my thoughts are with you all as the world collectively seeks to overcome this crisis.

I’m writing to you all from Thailand, where measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 are similar in scale to other countries around the world, and I am reminded of the importance of community in overcoming difficult times. 

Football brings people together and while currently people are being asked to separate and to maintain distance from one another for the wellbeing of everyone, it’s important we find ways to support each other through this unique set of circumstances. The world is more connected now than it has ever been and maintaining those human connections, albeit from our own homes, will become increasingly important as we move through this together.

As a Club, we feel we can play an important role in this, using our resources, our reach and our influence to support public health services and to support the members of our communities that need it most. The Club is working constantly to deliver this and to ensure that, in the absence of football, we continue to fulfil our responsibilities as a focal point for our communities – bringing people together, supporting the vulnerable and trying to do the right thing.

Many of you will know that today would have been my beloved father, Khun Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha’s birthday. In the spirit of generosity that he was so well known for, we will be making an appropriate charitable donation to support crucial work taking place in our communities, as we look to navigate our way through this crisis and emerge from it stronger.

The coronavirus pandemic has presented the world with an unprecedented situation, where advice and recommendations are understandably changing as it evolves, which makes it all the more important that we remain agile and continue to make decisions in good faith, based on facts and how we feel we can best deploy our resources to offer the right level of support to the right people. This in itself will be an evolving process and we’ll continue to keep our activity under review.

Football will be back, but that is for another day. This is about an extended family of people coming together to support each other through difficult times. Our overwhelming priority right now is the wellbeing of our staff, players, fans and the wider public, and supporting the communities whose support has always been so important to us.

Stay home. Stay safe.

Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha
Chairman

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