Taekwondo humanitarian foundation launches 1st pilot program
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World Taekwondo Federation President Choue Chung-won, center in back row, poses with children, demonstration team members and other participants at the opening ceremony of a taekwondo academy in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp on Tuesday. / Courtesy World Taekwondo Federation
By Nam Hyun-woo
The World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) launched a new humanitarian program to assist refugees in Jordan’s Zaatari camp, Tuesday (local time).
The program is the first of two pilot programs initiated by the federation’s Taekwondo Humanitarian Foundation, which aims to help refugees around the world as well as instruct them in the combat sport.
At the camp, some 70 kilometers northeast of the Jordanian capital of Amman, the WTF held an opening ceremony for a taekwondo academy, with a performance from its demonstration team to celebrate the launch.
Attending the ceremony were WTF President Choue Chung-won, Mafraq Governor Ahmad Samara Al-Zu`bei, Zaatari camp head Col. Abdelrahman Al-Amoush and South Korean Ambassador to Jordan Choi Hong-ki.
A member of the demonstration team, Hong Shi-young, will remain in Jordan for two months to train four Jordanian instructors in coaching techniques. The four, chosen from among 20 applicants, will then teach taekwondo to Syrian refugees at both Zaatari, a temporary home to 79,000 refugees, and at the Al Azraq camp, which houses some 28,000.
To gain experience before the full-scale launch of the Taekwondo Humanitarian Foundation early next year, the WTF is working on various pilot programs.
The foundation is undergoing an establishing process in Lausanne, Switzerland. The WTF seeks to help refugees and displaced people worldwide by sending them educational and medical personnel and taekwondo instructors.
On the heels of the Jordanian effort, the WTF will launch the second pilot program in quake-hit Nepal in late January 2016. After sending a 30-person medical team affiliated with the federation, Choue will visit the country with the demonstration team.
“The global refugee crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, and the plight of child refugees, as I have personally witnessed in recent days, is heart-rending,” Choue said. “As an Olympic federation, it is the World Taekwondo Federation’s responsibility to be part of the solution, and the humanitarian foundation is our vehicle to do that.”