International Day of Sport for Development and Peace
06 April was the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. I can feel a bit ambivalent about these sort of international campaign days. The sentiment is undeniably spot on, but I wonder about the impact they have in galvanising effort and their relation to individual lives around the world.
Does much change / get better as a result? I certainly saw plenty of these days come and go during my 20 years as a diplomat and I’m still wondering – what do you think?
Perhaps we need a better way to celebrate the impact of sport and community sport, something I’ll touch on shortly. That said, if it hadn’t been the international day of sport on Monday, I may not have read an article written by Ivo Freijsen, the UNHCR Representative in Bangladesh.
His article "One Goal at a Time" describes the impact of sport for Rohingya refugees. A one line summary won’t get anywhere near doing it justice, but I was struck again with how sport can be essential within immediate humanitarian settings and as “critical avenues for young people to become an active part of their community and contribute to social cohesion” today and in the future. Something I have seen and heard many times in many contexts. Sport clearly matters.
Returning to how best to celebrate this impact in order to galvanise existing effort, to attract more political support and more financial backing, I wanted to thank colleagues who joined the latest Leeds Summit Working Group this week. We discussed how to get the balance between showcasing compelling qualitative stories of individuals deeply impacted by community sport and the macro figures around social benefit. We’ll experiment with some comms in and around the Leeds Declaration over the next month or two which I hope will land with both private and public sector in order to boost support for community sport in the UK - and as a means to promote international community cohesion and development.
Thanks as well this week to Henry Chappell, Founder and Chief Executive at Pitch Marketing Group, for his brilliant insights into how we can better pitch our offer and our support for community sport.
Have a great weekend!
