Philippines

FundLife

FundLife was founded in 2014 as a direct response to Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), which struck the Philippines in November 2013. The typhoon left more than 1 million people homeless. FundLife created a football support programme to support child-survivors and those impacted by the disaster.

Since then, FundLife has evolved it’s work to create stay-in school projects support the most marginalised youth as well as responding to climate change emergencies.

FundLife also delivers an annual ‘football for all festival’, the ‘Sama-Sama Games’ that invites both marginalised and non-marginalised youth to come together through football.

Since its founding, FundLife has reached over 100,000 under-served young people, including 40,000 adolescent girls.

FundLife’s flagship programme is Football for Life Academy (FFLA). This is a purposeful-play project that supports highly vulnerable young people (13-24) to stay in education/training and equips them with life-skills to ensure they can secure dignified and sustainable employment.

FundLife also created Girls Community League as a visible and safe-space for girls to access futsal in their communities.

In addition to football for social impact, FundLife also runs non-football based projects around life-skills and access to employment.

ORGANISATION DETAILS

Facebook - FundLife

Facebook - Football For Life Academy

Facebook - Girls Got This

Instagram - Girls Got This

Website - Fund Life

Website - Girls Got This

PARTICIPANTS

Underprivileged and marginalised young people (11-24)

Highly vulnerable teenage girls (13-18)

LOCATIONS

Leyte, Cebu and Samar

Country statistics

113 out of 189 in Human Development Index rankings (UNDP, 2022)

Average annual salary per person $4,320 (World Bank, 2023)

The Philippines are at the highest risk of experiencing a natural disaster in the world.

The Philippines is an archipelago consisting of more than 7,600 islands in Southeastern Asia with a population of 116.3 million (CIA World Factbook; Worldometer, 2024).

The group of islands is at the highest risk in the world of facing a natural disaster according to the World Risk Index (WFP, 2023). Between 2008 – 2023 62.2 million people were internally displaced by natural disasters such as storms and flooding (IDMC, 2023).

Philippines is one of the countries along the Ring of Fire, a belt of active volcanoes and earthquake epicentres bordering the Pacific Ocean; up to 90% of the world's earthquakes and some 75% of the world's volcanoes occur within the Ring of Fire (CIA World Factbook).

Scientists say that climate change and increasing temperatures will make tropical cyclones nearly two times more likely. This comes after an unprecedented sequence of six tropical cyclones hit the country in October and November in 2024 displacing hundreds of thousands and killing 114 people (Reuters, 2024).

Between 2016 and 2022, Robert Duterte was president and led a violent ‘war on drugs’ which was criticised globally for breaching human rights. During his time as president some 30,000 people were killed, many of whom were young men from poor areas. He is now being investigated by the International Criminal Court for his actions and the incitement of violence during his leadership (The Guardian, 2024).

There is a severe housing shortage in the country, with a backlog of 6.5 million housing units required to meet the need. UN Habitat estimates that by 2040 if left unaddressed this could reach 22 million. Housing shortage is caused by urbanisation, climate change, an increase in informal settlements and armed conflict (Habitat For Humanity, 2023).