Sports for Peace: Common Ground Awards 2010
image via mysa.bjornborg.com
The Common Ground Awards are coming up (November 11). If you’d like to come, get your tickets now!
This week we are highlighting the powerful role sports can play in bridging differences and building long-term peace, both through longstanding organizations like the Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) and courageous players like the South African Springbok Rugby Team of 1995—both will be honored in our 2010 Awards.
Donor agencies like the U.N. and USAID have only recently recognized the instrumentality of sports-based programs in development work, specifically as it pertains to youth involvement and ownership of such programs. When MYSA was founded in 1987 in the Mathare slums outside Nairobi, they had no significant donors, which Founder Bob Munro views, in hindsight, as a hidden blessing: “MYSA was left alone to evolve solely in response to the needs of its members and the community.” And evolve they did, to an organization that today boasts 20,000 members who participate in a range of sport- and community development-related activities rooted in empowering youth leadership and decision-making. Executive Director, Peter Karanja, will be accepting the award. As one of the earliest MYSA participants, he encapsulates the idea that, “For MYSA, the youth are no longer the leaders of tomorrow. For MYSA, in their communities in the Mathare and neighboring slums and in the Nairobi City Council, the youth are already the leaders of today.”
National sports teams can be an inspiring force for change too, as seen during the 1995 Rugby World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa. Because of its history with apartheid, South Africa had long been a pariah in the world of international sports. The 1995 games presented an opportunity to not only shine in the sporting world for the first time, but to begin the process of healing and unification. For non-white South Africans, the Springboks represented the dark history of racial injustice during apartheid, and they refused to support them, rooting for whichever team played against the Boks. Despite this history, Mandela felt the Spingboks could be a unifying force, and declared, “the Boks belong to all of us now.” The team learned the new national anthem, formerly a song of black resistance, and sang it at the start of each game, slowly winning-over non-white South Africans. With the Springbok defeat of the New Zealand All Blacks in the final game, Mr. Mandela—in a green Bok jersey and cap—presented the winning trophy to the South African captain François Pienaar on the rugby pitch in front of thousands of cheering fans, white and non-white alike. This event was viewed as a major turning point in the healing process of post-apartheid South Africa, and has been documented in a book Playing the Enemy by John Carlin and in the 2009 movie Invictus.
