MY STORY
Mayron
Mayron is from from Ocana, in the Colombian department of Norte Santander. Ocana is a place surrounded by forests and an area that has many cocaine plantations. Due to this, there are a lot of armed groups and illegal activities in the region, leading to many displaced people who seek safety in the city of Ocana. Mayron wants to give the children in his community an alternative to all the violence, which is why he became a football coach.
QUICK FACTS
Mayron started as a volunteer coach without any formal education. He spent all his salary for buying training material to implement proper training sessions with the kids in his community. Now he is studying physical education and wants to overthrow the old coaching style. Instead of only supervising the children during practice, he wants to be a role model for them on and off the pitch and convey not only sportive skills but also social values.
Mayron
Project: Young Coach Education Colombia II (Jul – Oct 2022 )
Parent Organization: Fundación Falcao
Born: 1993
Nationality: Colombia
MY STORY
“My name is Mayron, I come from the region of Ocana in Norte Santander. Ocana is a city surrounded by forests with many cocaine plantations. As a result, there are a lot of armed groups and illegal activities all around: The different militant groups fight each other, because all of them want to gain control over the region and the cocaine plantations. This is one of the reasons why there are so many internally displaced people, in addition to the many refugees who come across the border from Venezuela. And those are the kids that I am working with.
My biggest dream is to change their perspective. The children live in such a violent environment that all they do is playing war themselves. They are running around with sticks and pretend it is a gun. When I was a child, I got involved in these games too. Everything was about war and violence. But I wanted to change this. So, I started to take the kids to football training sessions and became a volunteer coach without any formal education, spending all my salary for training material. Through sport, I gave the children an alternative to playing war and showed them how much more they could learn from being on the pitch and playing football instead.
The Young Coach Education has impacted me as a coach a lot. Now, when I coach, it is not only about going to the pitch, doing the training session, and being done once the training is over. It is different now, because the interaction with the kids and my influence on them goes beyond the pitch. I can see the development of every child that participates in my training. When they first come, their behavior is shaped by their violent experiences. But through football and what I have learnt during the Young Coach Education I can teach them values like empathy, responsibility, discipline, and honesty. The children learn these values in the game and start to represent them not only on the pitch but also in the community. They start to apply them in different aspects of their lives and to reflect on them.
My biggest satisfaction as a coach is to be able to take these kids away from the violence and to make them better persons not only for the game of football but also for society. So that they can contribute to the establishment of a more peaceful coexistence and community.”
GALLERY MAYRON
Young Coaches
Our Young Coaches are community leaders and role models in less privileged societies. They commit themselves to support the children of their communities by conveying important social topics (conflict resolution, inclusion, HIV prevention, etc.) through football. Each of the Young Coaches represents a unique personal story.
