Just Play Covid-19 awareness reached Makira Ulawa province last month as a team from Honiara held two separate festivals at the Pirupiru Community High School and Mwaradja village in Ulawa Island on Friday 21st August and Saturday 22nd August 2020.
This is the first-ever Just Play festival to be held in Makira Ulawa province and more than 150 turned up to watch the event at Pirupiru school.
“The Just Play programme hosted the first-ever Just Play festival in Makira Ulawa Province and was held in Pirupiru Community High School in Ulawa Island,” a statement from the team reads.
“The festival was mainly for 13 to 18 years of age therefore the Mwadjo’a and Moli Community High School are involved. However, before the festival started we collected the names of the students that are there to participate in the covid19 awareness festival, the total number of students attained is 152”.
The event attracted lots of the surrounding communities that were there to witness the festival. They say lots of good things about the Just Play programme mainly about the awareness of the COVID-19.
The awareness was based on the eight (8) steps of handwashing such as wash hands to keep germs away, build your team, protect yourselves from germs and use your voice and others.
After the successful completion of the first festival, the team went on to organized a second festival on Saturday 22nd August 2020 at Mwaradja village which involved partners like churches, provincial government and the police.
Around 300 plus children took part in the festival and 172 were girls. The festival was mainly for 6-12 years of age.
Most children’s participating in the COVID-19 festival is from Mwaradja village and Ahi’a village which is the catchment of Rarahoi Primary school. Apart from Raraho’i primary school, some other schools and communities involved in the festival. For example Ripo Primary School, Moli Primary School, Ahia village, Mwadjoa village and Haraina village.
According to reports from the Just Play team, the children and volunteers participating were very excited because children’s are moving from station to station and also volunteers are working with different types of children’s with games and sharing of different messages allocated for each station.
In addition to that volunteers were working very well as they shared the sport to life skills very clearly for children’s to understand.
Mini-tournament was organized after the festivals which consist of 6 girls’ teams and 5 boys’ teams with a rotation of substitutions to give game time to all participants.
Presentations of key tags were presented to the top two winning teams after the completion of the tournament.
Just Play Solomon Islands would like to acknowledge donor partners Australian Government, Football Federation Australia, New Zealand Government, UNICEF, UEFA Foundation for Children and OFC & SIFF for their support.
Just Play Solomon Islands also like to acknowledge the Ministry of Health for COVID-19 posters & pamphlets.
These will be a series of 20 festivals & campaigns on COVID-19 Preparedness Awareness and festivals for this month will be at Vella la vella and Gizo in Western Province.
