Social Harmony Through Table Tennis and Football Games
AGHO is honored to announce a project “Social Harmony through Table Tennis and Football in Sar-e-Pul and Samangan provinces, sponsored by United Nation Development Program (UNDP). social activities, social cohesion and band, importance of their performance in this critical condition via different schemes and one of these schemes is table tennis for girls in two these provinces initiated by AGHO to connect young girls to the social activities and raise awareness their presence in collective gatherings.
The overall objective of this project was to strengthen social harmony in two distinct adjacent districts of Samangan and Sar-e-Pul provinces through table tennis for girls and football game between boys.
- Sar-e-Pul football ground design and setup is completed
- Sar-e-Pul football is opened in a ceremony with the presence of guests
- Samangan football ground setup is near completion
- Football and table tennis players attend and receive training normally
Players opinion about the effects of sports on social harmony between districts
Experts from around the globe believe that sport is a powerful tool to promote peace, tolerance and understanding, bringing people together across boundaries, cultures and religions. Its intrinsic values such as teamwork, fairness, discipline and respect are understood all over the world and can be utilized in the sustainability of peace and social cohesion. AGHO team belief is that the only tool that can reduce tension, higlight peace and stability is through sports between the districts to reduce conflict and plant the hope of development, living in social harmony and prosperity using sports that both district have in common. 2nd survey has collected total of 109 players opinions about their perception of relation between peace and sports that has posed in a questionnaire. Following charts shows the result of pre-survey and 2nd survey side by side based on three important questions has been asked in the survey:
Chart 2 shows that the number of players who agree that sports can reduce tension and reduce conflicts in society is doubled and those players who had nuetral stance are reduced by half. A significant percentage reduction can be seen in number of highly disagree from 12% to 2% and that two percent are normal to have. The percentage of disagree players were 21% in the pre-survey and it is reduced to 10% and it shows a hundred percent reduction in the players perception. Overall, we can conclude that a significant shift from negative to positive perception among the players has been happened and it is a well-coming sign that sports can play an important role to reduce conflicts in society.
Girls' satisfaction rate on sports participation
One of the criteria to check whether the program was effective for girls to actively participate and increase livelihood for them was to have their opinion about how they felt before and after the project “social harmony through table tennis and football game” project. In the video interview all the girls were hopeless and confined to home. In the first interview, all the girls without exception expressed their satisfaction about the program that made them happy and provide a goal for them to look-forward and climb the ladder of success through these kinds of program and asked AGHO to implement more of these kinds of projects.