Yesterday Indonesian Rugby played a role in BritCham’s “Give Kids a Sporting Chance” Charity Day at Karawaci which was part of the Jakarta Highland Gathering (JHG) weekend, teaching some basic Rugby to about 300 young children from schools and orphanages located within the Jakarta region. Many of these children had never seen a Rugby ball let along held or kicked one before yesterday, so it was fantastic to see so many smiling faces on these children once they got a feel for Rugby.

The children were split into groups of 30-40 and were also introduced to sports such as Tug-O-War, Cricket, Basketball, Soccer and a variety of teamwork skills by reps from Outward Bounds. Each group spent about 30 minutes at each sporting station before being rotated to the next sport.

It was wonderful to see that new Rugby converts from Mama Sayang’s orphanage Vini Tri Ningtyas, Ayu and Esteriana Ekawati plus George Speirs (pictured above) the son of JHG Chairman, Alistair Speirs, who were all able to volunteer their time to help Indonesian Rugby stalwart, Steve Barber coach the children.

The children were introduced to some basic passing drills, given that ‘catch and pass’ is the simplest and yet most important skill in a game of Rugby, so that they could get a quick feel for the game. All the coaches were impressed by the enthusiasm and the willingness of the children to get involved in the various drills.

The big winner of the day was not so much the number of children involved but the way in which the children were full of smiles and loved the opportunity to have a go at Rugby. Indonesian Rugby loves being part of this charity event and looks forward to being involved again in 2014.