This mother-of-two became a 'sports mum' to hundreds of Singaporean children and youth over the past 13 years

For more than a decade, Miruna Ranjan has stood on the sidelines cheering on children and youth during sports practice, making sure they had enough to eat and drink, mentoring them and helping to build sports programmes under the SportCares initiative, which uses sport to uplift vulnerable communities.

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It was a Saturday night – a time when most people might be out with friends. But Miruna Ranjan was in a brightly lit stadium in Jurong holding bunches of bananas – which she had just emptied a supermarket of, much to the astonishment of the cashier.

This was 2013. Miruna, then 28, was volunteering at a newly launched football programme by SportCares, a government-led sport-for-good initiative. Called Saturday Night Lights, this was where vulnerable youth, such as those from low-income families or at-risk backgrounds, came together to hone their football skills.  

Around 60 youth participated, and some came with empty stomachs. Miruna’s job was to ensure that they ate and drank before practice so that they would not cramp up or faint while playing. 

She did this every Saturday night for a year. 

Today, Miruna is the assistant director and team lead at SportCares. However, she never stopped quietly supporting kids on the sidelines – be it at football, tennis or running – just like a sports mum.

“My family jokes that I had kids before I had kids,” laughed the 40-year-old, who has two daughters aged 11 and six.

THE ACCIDENTAL SPORTS MUM

Why would anyone be a sports mum to kids not her own?

“People called me crazy. Why sacrifice your Saturday nights?” she admitted. “But it was nice to be there.

“Many of these kids are from families where they had to look after others – a parent, younger siblings. They didn’t get to do many of the things they wanted to. But here, for three to four hours every week, they got to be a kid, play, do what they love,” Miruna told CNA Women.  

Miruna discovered her calling quite serendipitously. In 2012, she started working for Sport Singapore (SportSG) as a senior executive in corporate communications and relations.

That was the year SportCares, the philanthropic arm of SportSG, was launched. That was how Miruna came to be a volunteer and founding member of Saturday Night Lights.

“A lot of the youth then were playing football recreationally at void decks and open areas, and not in a very safe way. Some did not even have proper shoes,” she said.

The programme provided them with proper shoes, certified coaches and a structured programme to help them with strength and conditioning. Volunteers like Miruna also became friends and mentors to the kids.

“I’d pass them a banana or drink and strike up a conversation. When they see you every week, they start to share random things about their lives – what they are doing in school, if anything interesting happened to them during the week,” Miruna said.

People called me crazy. Why sacrifice your Saturday nights?

These were her first conversations with kids from challenging backgrounds, many of whom lived in rental flats, she said.

“It’s easy to label them as ‘troubled kids’ or ‘challenging kids’. But as you mingle with them every week, you start to see them as people, not a label. It was really a lesson for me in reserving my judgement,” she said.

Over time, Miruna not only saw the potential in these youth, but also how sports helped to build their confidence, resilience, integrity, discipline, empathy and teamwork.

So in 2014, when the opportunity came for her to join the SportCares team full-time, working on outreach, engagement, partnership, event planning and programme development, she said yes. 

CHAMPIONING INCLUSIVE SPORTS

The career move coincided with the birth of her first child, a baby girl.

“Having a girl made me think about the world I’d be leaving behind for her. I really wanted to do something that would empower girls and empower women,” she said.

It so happened that the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) announced that Singapore would be the host city for season-ending championships from 2014 to 2019.

Miruna and her team saw it as an opportunity to get the WTA to adopt SportCares as its local social cause for those five years. Working with Beyond Social Services, a charity supporting vulnerable families, they launched the Love Singapore Tennis Programme, bringing tennis to girls from low-income families and vulnerable backgrounds.

The team began training some 20 to 25 girls at Yio Chu Kang Sport Centre weekly. As the girls trained, Miruna chatted with their mothers courtside. After training, the whole group would sit down to a meal whipped up by a couple of the mums.

“I was a new mum and was stressed about having a newborn at home. So we shared stories about the challenges of being a mum, and bonded over the fact that I had a daughter and they had daughters too. We were all mothers trying to do our best for our children,” Miruna said.

During the WTA finals, SportCares also offered the girls and their families the opportunity to be involved in activities, clinics and workshops that ran for two weeks.

Beyond tennis, in 2018, Miruna was also part of the team that launched Play Inclusive, a national sports competition for persons with and without intellectual disabilities and special needs.

Participants played a variety of sports such as basketball, football, floorball, where they learned physical and communication skills. “I saw participants become physically stronger and more coordinated, more focused and confident in following instructions, and more willing to communicate and interact with others during play,” Miruna said.

“The pride that you see in a parent’s face when their child is competing or winning something is also amazing,” she said.

A MENTOR TO VULNERABLE YOUTH

Today, Miruna spearheads and supports sports programmes, and mentors youth she crosses paths with. 

She also looks for opportunities for these youth to participate in character-building events and volunteering opportunities, such as helping out at events or assisting with coaching.

“The nature of the social services system is such that if you are labelled low-income, oftentimes you have the mentality of only being on the receiving end of assistance.

“We want to flip that kind of perspective on its head by saying: How can we work together? What skills or assets do you have?

“Giving back empowers vulnerable communities because it makes them feel like they too are part of something. We are trying to reduce the imbalance in the social structures. When it comes to sport, we can be equals,” she said.

Miruna’s face lights up when she talks about Nurul Hanisa Karim, whom she met 12 years ago when the latter was just 13. The young girl came from a low-income family and lived in a one-room flat with five siblings. Because space and resources were scarce, she turned to sports.

She began running for CareRunners, a SportCares programme giving vulnerable youth access to training, running activities and competitions. This programme has since been subsumed into the SportCares Li Foundation Multi-Sport Programme.

Through it, Hanisa developed a decade-long friendship with Miruna, often reaching out to the latter for mentorship and advice.

Hanisa grew with the programme and began training to be a sports coach, assisting the main coaches weekly. In 2022, when SportCares celebrated its 10th anniversary, she was even picked to be an emcee and facilitate a panel discussion with coaches and beneficiaries.

“When I first met Hanisa, she was very young, shy and timid,” recalled Miruna. “To see her on stage, dressed up, dolled up, speaking so well and introducing (then) President Halimah Yacob was a defining moment for me. She has come a really long way. Being part of her journey, I had kind of a ‘mum’ feeling.”

Inspired by her SportCares journey, Hanisa now works as a programme associate at a student care centre, planning and running after-school programmes such as sports drills, games and arts and crafts for the children.

Having seen the transformation in Hanisa and other youth she mentored, Miruna makes sports a priority for her two daughters as well. Both are learning taekwondo, and her elder girl also plays netball. Miruna drives them for practice, and “screams like a mad woman at courtside”.

“We often underestimate the power of sport. Sports can really bring out the best in someone,” she said.

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