Mrs. Soraia Chung SauraRegional Coordinator of ICTSG for South America.Under the emerald canopy of the Amazon rainforest, Soraia Chung Saura knelt in a circle of women, her hands deftly weaving a peteca—a traditional shuttlecock made of feathers and rubber. Around her, mothers, daughters, and grandmothers from riverside communities watched intently, their faces illuminated by the dappled sunlight filtering through kapok trees. “This isn’t just a game,” Soraia said, her voice blending Portuguese and Tupi-Guarani rhythms. “It’s a map of our ancestors’ joy. Let’s reclaim it.”For Soraia, every stitch in the peteca was a rebellion. As ICTSG’s South America Coordinator, she’d spent 15 years turning neglected games into tools of empowerment. Her office at the University of São Paulo whispered her journey: walls adorned with indigenous jogo da onça boards, feminist manifestos dog-eared beside her acclaimed books—Play as Resistance, Games of the Forgotten. A faded poster of the 2019 Mulheres da Terra (Women of the Land) festival hung proudly, capturing the moment a 70-year-old quilombola woman outdanced a capoeira master in a samba de roda showdown.Her awakening came in 2008, while researching xondaro—the Guarani warrior’s dance. In a Mato Grosso do Sul village, she watched girls barred from the ritual, deemed “too fragile” for its martial steps. That night, she choreographed a women’s xondaro circle, blending battle stances with birth-giving postures. “Our bodies are not limitations,” she declared, her own scars from childhood polio hidden beneath flowing skirts. The village elders scoffed—until the girls’ performance drew tears from the tribe’s matriarch.This defiance became her blueprint. In 2016, she launched Jogadoras Ancestrais (Ancestral Players), a network training women to coach indigenous games in favelas and corporate boardrooms alike. Her crowning achievement? The 2021 Copa das Raízes (Roots Cup), where Yanomami girls competed in roraima (tree-climbing races) against Rio de Janeiro’s parkour teens—streamed live to 2 million viewers. “You’re not just athletes,” she told them pre-match. “You’re storytellers with calloused hands.”Yet Soraia’s genius thrived in quiet revolutions. In a São Paulo prison, she taught inmates to carve mancala boards, their fingers tracing ancient African counting games as therapy for trauma. During the pandemic, her TikTok series #BrincadeiraDeVó (Grandma’s Games) went viral, with families reviving bola de gude (marbles) tournaments on high-rise balconies. “Play isn’t escapism,” she argued at the 2023 UNESCO Forum. “It’s how we reimagine freedom.”Off-duty, Soraia was a symphony of contrasts. The professor who lectured in tailored blazers could be found barefoot in Bahia’s candomblé ceremonies, swirling to sacred drums. Her secret sanctuary? A rooftop garden in São Paulo, where she grew medicinal jurubeba plants and practiced yoga hybridized with indigenous stretching rituals.One twilight, as students packed up after her “Decolonizing Play” seminar, a skeptic asked why she wasted energy on “children’s games.” Soraia wordlessly led him to the window. Below, a girl guided her blindfolded grandmother through a amarelinha (hopscotch) grid chalked on asphalt. “See?” Soraia whispered. “She’s not just jumping squares. She’s drawing a new world.”In Soraia’s universe, every game was a seed—planted in the cracked soil of inequality, watered with memory, blossoming into futures yet unnamed. And she? Just a gardener, tending to roots that refused to be buried.Social Media:Linkedin: Instagram: Facebook: