Taw Bee has a plan to change the game.
Bee has long been a part of the soccer community in the Twin Cities metro, playing for Como Park and Augsburg before joining Vlora FC’s women’s team for its debut season in 2023. She has also served on the Karen Football Association’s Youth Academy Advisory Board.
Bee’s work in and around the beautiful game has recently taken a new turn, one fueled by her passion for her community. The midfielder is orchestrating a fundraiser to cover a project that seeks to help girls soccer players attending the Thoo Mweh Khee Learning Center and New Jerusalem Children’s Home, both in Thailand, receive the proper resources to play soccer.
Bee, like the students at Thoo Mweh Khee, is Karen. The Karen diaspora has become a major part of the Twin Cities community and also continues to have a large presence in Thailand, where many Karen people fleeing the long-standing conflict between the Karen people and the government and military of Myanmar have initially sought refuge.
“Many of these students have fled from Burma, from persecution by the Burmese military,” Bee explained in an interview with Vlora Content Writer Dominic Bisogno. “Thoo Mweh Khee is one of the biggest schools for migrant children here, they have children of all ages learning here. … I currently teach here. I teach English and a medical elective. New Jerusalem is a children’s home that is run by my cousin. Many of the children there have lost their families. New Jerusalem has two homes, a boys home and a girls home.”
Gender is one of the core dynamics in this mission. Through both her personal experience and her work with the refugee communities at Thoo Mweh Khee and at New Jerusalem Children’s Home, Bee has seen how girls are often left out of whatever opportunities may exist to play soccer and grow one’s game.
The former Vlora player explained how a variety of challenges, including the gender divide and more general resource issues, create barriers.
“[Despite challenges] there is passion here for girls soccer. Girls here want to play, but there’s no opportunity for them to play and no safe spaces for them to play. So they aren’t able to follow through with that interest. … There were no soccer balls when I started training here. I personally brought four balls and on the first day there were 80 girls. … The Karen Football Association generously donated 30 balls and some cones so we’ve been able to improve the situation.”
Bee’s mission will focus specifically on providing for girls. The fundraiser, which aims to make $3,000, will cover purchasing and maintaining essential equipment and resources, including soccer balls, cones, goals, pennies, training shirts, cleats, and rental fees for a weekly practice field.
Bee’s journey to taking on this mission included several steps, including conversations before she left for Thailand this year, as well as learning experiences when she arrived at Thoo Mweh Khee.
“Generally in the culture, sports like volleyball, soccer and caneball are male-dominant,” she explained. “Part of it is that women and girls are expected to focus on household duties, but also when they do try to play they aren’t welcomed. I experienced this in my own way in Minnesota growing up. … My first day at Thoo Mweh Khee, I went to play volleyball and it was almost all male. I looked to the side and saw a soccer field with only boys playing. I asked my brother why girls weren’t also playing and he explained that when girls do take a chance to play they get pushed out because there’s just so many boys. As someone who’s played many games where I’m the only girl, I know it can be really intimidating and it’s often not very welcoming.”
Far before that volleyball game, however, Bee got a look into the problems facing the girls at Thoo Mweh Khee through a conversation at Urban Village.
“I knew I would be teaching at Thoo Mweh Khee at the end of the summer and the director of the school actually visited Minnesota through the non-profit organization Urban Village,” Bee said. “He agreed that there were not enough opportunities for the girls but that they wanted to play. That sort of sparked the idea originally for me. Urban Village was able to donate some funds for me to help start the whole project and I also reached out to the Karen Football Association before I left. [Founder Kyle Johnson] was my high school coach and he understood my passion for service.”
The project is now well underway for Taw Bee and the girls at Thoo Mweh Khee and New Jerusalem. As of Tuesday, Dec. 10, the fundraiser has raised $2,180.
For Bee, helping foster growth in the Karen community has long been a passion, though she is quick to give considerable credit to the many others who have helped her.
“[Helping grow opportunities] is something I always want to do any time I enter a Karen environment. … It’s very natural for me to want to provide soccer opportunities for female athletes because I know how life changing it is,” she said. “For this project, it was never really about if I should do this, it was about how can I do this. I’ve had amazing supporters through this journey and when I posted the fundraiser there were so many people that wanted to help, even my sixth grade teacher, so I’m so thankful for that.”
The ties between Taw Bee and the girls she works with are undeniable. She made this clear in her interview with Vlora, noting she cannot help becoming teary eyed when talking about her work within the Karen community in both the United States and Thailand.
“It’s incredibly meaningful to me. I’m able to relate to these girls and we have a shared culture but also shared cultural expectations that have held us back. I’m very privileged to have been able to emigrate to the United States,” Bee continued. “I get really emotional when I talk about this because I have personally experienced a lot of this discouragement and the negative environment that can take you out of a space you want to be in. So, it feels really incredible to be able to provide something better for these girls. … Having this personal connection with these girls really makes this experience so much better. It’s my people that I’m helping and I’m just so happy to have this opportunity with them. … I’m so incredibly happy to have so many people. Katie and some of the players from Vlora were some of the first people to donate. This is giving these girls an opportunity they haven’t had before and telling them they are encouraged and welcomed and supported.”
You can find more information about Taw Bee’s fundraiser and work, along with how to contribute, here.
Vlora FC would also like to pass along a reminder of our women’s tryouts, taking place at the TCO Sports Garden on Tuesday, Dec. 17 at 8:30 p.m. Further information can be found here.
