Squash Dreamers, one of our partner Squash for Development Organisations, held their first ever Squash Dreamers tournament at the national federation.
Squash Dreamers provides young Syrian refugee and underprivileged Jordanian girls with professional squash and English training to help them apply to outstanding international and Jordanian schools.
The event gave the refugee girls they work with the opportunity to play a structed tournament, an exciting and inspirational opportunity.
We spoke with Daisy Van Leeuwen-Hill, Executive Director at Squash Dreamers, about the tournament and how important it is for the girls they work with.
-”We have been wanting to do a tournament for a long time, its really hard for us to arrange for our girls to travel, both because of visas and funding but we wanted to give them a chance to show off their hard work and enjoy encouraging each other”
“The tournament was held, this past Saturday 20th July at the National Squash Federation. All 50 of our girls took part and we had two categories U11 and U17 (inclusive) the girls played amazingly and really shocked not just us, but also the national team with their high level squash playing. We finished with a medal giving ceremony (in arabic we call it tatweej تتويج which actually means coronation/ crowning which I quite like). Then food and home.”
“All 50 of our girls took part. We work with 50 girls aged 8-18 from impoverished areas of East amman, Jordan. The girls are vulnerable Jordanians and syrian, Palestinian and Sudanese refugees. Our average family has around 10 people at home and an average income of 250jd a month (way below the poverty line). “
“Squash Dreamers is home for so many kids who believe that they are completely unable to achieve anything. The support the organisation provides supports the girls in seeing that they are able to reach their dreams and helps them in staying in school, better their physical and emotional wellbeing and achieve their full potential.”
“Squash is a huge part of this, being the only sport that the majority of these girls play, coming from areas with no community sport infrastructure.
“Squash helps them to grow in confidence and gives them a sense of belonging and a purpose and watching them play together, cheer each other on, and win was amazing.”
“They LOVED the tournament. Don’t get me wrong, we had the usual tears but it was a great opportunity for them to become more accustomed to losing and winning and to celebrate in their friends’ wins.
“The little ones are aspiring to one day play the kind of squash that our oldest girls play and our older girls were there to cheer on and coach the little ones to get better.”
“We would like to make it yearly (we did invest in a cup afterall!) And with even our coaches shocked by their high level of play, we would like to play more tournaments outside of Jordan and find new challenges for our fantastic players.
“We would LOVE other people to come and visit us to play a tournament!! We will be participating in the annual Jordan National Squash Tournament in November too with the Jordanian National Team.”
If you would like to support the work of squash dreamers, visit https://www.squashdreamers.org/ or email daisy@squashdreamers.org
