The individual award for the Spirit of Muaythai went to Pernilla Johansson, of the Swedish Muaythai Federation this year. She has shown dedication to the sport as well dedication to helping at-risk individuals in making positive changes in their lives. Pernilla is also a former IFMA and WMC World Champion and has just been nominated as new chairperson of the IFMA Youth commission.
Pernilla is one of the founders of the Frysbox project, which started in 2007 in cooperation with the organisation Fryshuset in Stockholm, Sweden. Under the banner of “Sport is Your Gang,” the project began as a Muaythai training and dialogue project for young women who had been victims of crime, to learn self-defence and to build their self-respect and self-confidence. After a successful start, the project soon expanded to include Muaythai training for young men too. The target age group is now youth from 13-20 years old.
Again, this excellent program as all other founded on respect, honour, tradition, excellence and fair-play the pillars of Muaythai, and essentially pillars for a good life.
