Sports are one of our few global currencies, something that everyone (except perhaps the Taliban) can understand and enjoy. Kids all over the world grow up playing soccer — or football, as most of them much more logically call it — which creates this vast network of soccer-loving individuals spread across every continent. Baseball and basketball are now global phenomena (even China, it turns out, has really tall people who can handle a ball). And what of running, swimming, biking, dancing?
Everywhere people are sporting it up. And enterprising people around the world are tapping into sports’ near-universal appeal to make a difference in their societies.
The most enterprising among those are being recognized this month by an organization that supports sports’ ability to create change. Beyond Sport does this by hosting a summit every year and giving awards to sports-oriented organization that have been able to “drive positive change through sport.” The award winners get hefty funding, long-term assistance and the opportunity to meet others in the field, so to speak, at the summit.
This year’s winning projects run, as it were, the gamut, from peace-through-soccer to swimming-to-save-the-Arctic. The awards are given for a range of categories that point out some of the most important positive changes sports can bring about.
Some of the highlights are:
Saving Lives Through Dance, Best Project For Health.
The Indian organization Kolkata Sanved uses dance as a therapy to help survivors of trafficking build confidence. Using their bodies — which have often been badly abused — in new ways to express their emotions empowers these victims to work through their experiences and head toward a better future.
Polar Defence Project, Best Project for the Environment.
If you thought those people who swim the English Channel are hard-core, wait until you get a load of this project organized by the English Channel Swimming Association. Brave sportsmen have been swimming and kayaking across the Geographic North Pole to raise awareness about the alarming melting of the Arctic sea ice and the fact that, as the project statement reads, “all our futures will be sealed if the Arctic melt continues.”
Mine Risk Education Program, Most Courageous Use of Sport.
The NGO Spirit of Soccer is using soccer clinics to give kids some vital knowledge that may just save their lives. The clinics teach kids in post-conflict region about the dangers of landmines. The program has reached more than 75,000 children places such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia and Iraq.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.