Transforming Young Lives Through Sport

Transforming Young Lives Through Sport

Participation in sport is an internationally recognized human right and is important for people of all ages to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. For
young people, sport, play and exercise are vital for optimal growth and
learning, stimulating physical, cognitive, emotional and social development.
But the benefits of sport extend far beyond the individual. Through sport, we
can lay the groundwork for positive, lasting change on the societal level.

Around Uganda, Beyond Youths Sports programs promote health awareness, accelerate psychological healing in areas affected by natural disasters and
conflict, further social inclusion and cohesion, and contribute to economic
development through a variety of sport-based activities. Our programs take
advantage of sport’s popularity and convening power to mobilize young people
and their communities, communicate key messages, bring diverse groups together
and teach valuable life skills in a way that is fun and participatory.

Our sport-based programs also aim to empower and promote the inclusion of marginalized groups, especially minorities, girls, refugees, people with
disabilities and vulnerable children and youth.

Meeting Challenges with Sport BYSPORTS strives to be a leader in the field of sports programming by
developing a series of innovative and replicable models that demonstrate the
powerful effect of sport in transforming the lives of young people.

BYSPORTS is organizing sports-related projects in Uganda. These projects have a focus primarily on helping youth overcome health challenges (specifically, HIV/AIDS) and the
trauma associated with natural disasters. Now, we are broadening the scope of
our work to include programs addressing conflict management and economic
development using sports.

Protecting Against HIV/AIDS we appeal to all local sports coaches to incorporate an innovative HIV/AIDS
life skills curriculum into their teams’ activities. Through their work, young
people will learn how they can prevent HIV/AIDS and live a healthy life. The
programs also work to reduce stigma and discrimination against people affected
by HIV/AIDS.

I think the ideas behind how to promote our programs are the same. It is to find a platform to which many people pay close attention, and use that to transform part of people's interests into other things, say our programs. Yet the reaction may not be that quick, Passing our messages out is essential anyhow.

Imagine if each of the teams in the World Cup had a page on their web site, encouraging their fans to visit the web sites of youth organizations in their own countries, to become volunteers and donors. We need to teach athletes to do that