HÀ NỘI — Young female rugby players from Việt Nam, Laos and the Philippines will compete against the girls’ team from Belfast at the ChildFund Pass It Back Cup 2017.

The game will be played at the Belfast Harlequins RFC on August 21, a day before the Women’s Rugby World Cup semifinal. 

Six Vietnamese players departed from Hà Nội for Belfast yesterday. They will be there for seven days and participate in a range of activities, such as training with Ireland’s rugby clubs (Cooke Women’s Rugby and Ulster Rugby), meeting with Bill Pulver, sightseeing and picnicking. 

“ChildFund Pass It Back was established to help young people who face significant poverty and have few, if any, opportunities to get involved in organised sport. For young girls, the obstacles are even greater,” Chris Mastaglio, director of ChildFund Pass It Back, said.

“This is a programme which prioritises gender equity and the inclusion of girls, so we decided to hold this event in the lead-up to the Women’s Rugby Cup Final to highlight how women and girls’ rugby is developing across the world.

“Many of these girls have not left their province before, let alone flown on a plane to a different country. This is going to be such a great opportunity for them to see some of their role models in action,” Mastaglio said.

Pass It Back programme, launched by ChildFund in Việt Nam, Laos and the Philippines, aims to deliver an integrated rugby and life-skills curriculum in a safe environment that promotes the values of the game and builds a new generation of leaders in disadvantaged communities across Asia. 

The programme, which has been implemented in the northern provinces of Hòa Bình Province since 2015, aims to help children and young people overcome challenges, inspire positive social change and "pass it back" to their communities. 

Since its launch in September 2015, the project has delivered more than 17,000 classes for nearly 4,000 children and youth from Laos, Việt Nam and the Philippines.

ChildFund is an independent and non-religious international development organisation that is working to reduce child poverty in the developing world.

ChildFund began working in Việt Nam in 1995 and operates community development programmes in the areas of education, water and sanitation, sustainable livelihood, and child rights and child protection, as well as food security, maternal and child health, including HIV prevention. —VNS