500! They were almost 500!!! Who? Where? When? At the final running competition “Never give up” in Kafue district, Zambia. Enthusiastic children coming from different villages competed in a 5 kilometres cross country race to enjoy, to share emotions with friends, to receive a simple refreshment at the end of the event, to meet new people, to spend a day in a different way and to gain points to enter in the overall classification in order to win whether a marvellous mountain bike or a comfortable mattress or a warm blanket. In addition a mobile VCT (voluntary counselling and testing) unit spread information on sexual reproductive health and distributed thematic magazines on children and HIV encouraging children and youth to be tested on their HIV status. As entertainment then, a drama club exhibited few very funny and educative sketches.
Undoubtedly a great success, not just because I’m the co-founder of the “Never Give Up” ☺, – A multipurpose action under an holistic approach with a direct participation of vulnerable children in sport to enhance physical health and build life skills and positive value, and with the use of sport as a platform for communication, education and social mobilization.
This is just a good example to show how the intentional use of sport can be powerful to achieve important objectives as per the Millennium Development Goals.
Sport is an incredible tool of education, health, development and peace that carries over into all aspects of life: physical, cognitive, emotional, and social. In particular, through sport is possible to achieve benefits like promoting health and preventing disease, strengthening child and youth development and education, promoting gender equity, enhancing the inclusion and well-being of persons with disabilities, enhancing social inclusion, preventing conflict and building peace.
While here in Zambia, one of the most peaceful African country, sport is mainly used to achieve the first three goals , in Kenya, due to the sad post election violence early 2008, is very common to find sport programs also used to speed up the process of peace and reconciliation.
My duty station from September 2008 to February 2009 was Eldoret, 310 kilometres northwest of Nairobi, one of the ethnical clashes hot spot. Eldoret is also the world long distance running capital, a blessing for me, former triathlete and passionate supporter of marathoners. My unbelievable luck was also given by a fortuitous event to meet Claudio the Italian super coach of quickest marathoners in the world and winner of 3 medals at Beijing Olympic Games with 3 Kenyan athletes on track, who gave me hospitality at his home during my stay there, taking the opportunity to meet a good number of great sportive champions. I exploited the situation to try to understand whether sport and peace are really related as it was in my mind.
Why so many Kenyan run? Are runners sharing particular moral values? As Claudio explained me, run is a part of their culture, most of them run since they don’t have anything else to do, it’s like to have a drink with friends, then it’s completely free and it just requires the right passion to do it. And if Martin Lel (one of the quickest marathoners in the world winner of the London Marathon in 2005, 2007, and 2008, and the New York City Marathon in 2003 and 2007) changed his life becoming a very rich and famous marathon world champion, why not? may be the same could happen to someone else. In this case money for sure is the main leverage who push them to run, to follow the dream to come out of poverty skipping ordinary step using their talent.
I also tried to understand how and if tribalism within this particular sport elite environment was affecting their training and sadly I discovered the coexistence between Kalenjin and Kikuyu, the main tribes involved in the post election violence, in the same group of athletes became a very serious problem. Surprisingly to me, sharing the same passion, the same training paths, the same training camp and the same coach, was not enough to face and to overcome the conflict.
What was wrong? What was missing?
What was wrong in the Iran swimmer Mohammad Alirezaei who withdrew from his 100-meter breaststroke heat at the Beijin Olympic games? He was supposedly sick, but the heat also included Israel’s Tom Beeri. On the other hand Georgia’s Nino Salukvadze embraced and kissed her Russian foe Natalia Paderina, while their countries were fighting at home, after the two collected the bronze and silver, respectively, in the women’s 10-meter pistol shooting competition.
Lesson learnt: these experiences allowed me to understand that sport alone is not enough. If you put a ball in the middle of a football ground you can even worsen the situation.
Borrowing the idea from the Olympic anthropologist John MacAloon Sport its self is not good or bad, it is just an empty and neutral box to be filled in and a tool to be used with values, ideas, meaning, dependent on the cultural context in which takes place and people who take part.
The process is crucial and it’s the key for success. The “win at all costs” mentality must leave the floor to a “sport for all” approach in which the inner bad aspects of the nature of sport are contained and re-addressed by well-prepared coaches. Only in this way Sport can be a low entry and high impact point for a social change.
When I arrived in Kenya, I was very green about the international momentum around the use of sport as a tool of peace and development. It was just a personal inner feeling without the right theoretical knowledge. Imagine what a pleasant surprise to discover during my research a quite new movement that evolved out of a growing understanding of the contribution of sport and physical activity to individual and community development. I was perfectly fitting in it.
And so while in Eldoret I expanded my background in sport and reconciliation, using sport to cut across barriers and rebuild relationships among different ethnic groups, in Zambia, among other things, I’m active in the promotion sport activities to encourage people of all ages to become more physically active, providing opportunities for enjoyment and personal development, building self-esteem, and fostering positive social connection with others — all important factors in promoting and maintaining health and well-being.
The difference is not so much. Sport possesses, under certain conditions, unique attributes that enable it to bring particular value to development and peace processes. I think there are two main factors how can raise the possibility of success in sport programs:
– to give programs a structure, developing best practices through logical models in order to illustrate the presumed relationships between project resources, goals, outputs and various outcomes activities
– to combine sport with non sport components under a wider and holistic approach oriented to create the conditions for a social change.
Finally, I strongly believe in sport’s capacity to impact diverse development and peace objectives and I really feel very lucky to have been having the possibility in my two last work experiences to add sport activities to the main program I’ve been dealing with.
“Let us be the change we want to see”. Mahatma Gandhi
