{"id":436129,"date":"2026-01-27T09:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T09:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/436129\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T09:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T09:08:08","slug":"woman-from-maidstone-taking-muay-thai-skills-to-refugee-camps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/436129\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman from Maidstone taking Muay Thai skills to refugee camps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The fitness trainer is using her skills to help some of the most vulnerable women. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Samuelson has recently returned from Athens, where she volunteered with EmpowerVan, a charity which teaches weekly self-defence classes to women and girls currently housed in refugee camps outside the city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Founder and director, Claude Jonkmans, said: &#8220;In our camp classes, we usually focus on physical techniques so we do anything from learning how to block, learning how to strike.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Its activities are designed to help female refugees, many of whom come from countries such as Afghanistan and Sudan, to better protect themselves in new environments. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jonkmans said: &#8220;We also do empowerment practices where we just learn how to say no, where we find our boundaries.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fitness trainer is using her skills to help some of the most vulnerable women. Samuelson has recently&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-436129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}