ROTA Promotes Peace and Development Through Sports
With the collaboration of the United Nations Office on Sports for Development and Peace (UNOSDP) and Right to Play, Reach Out To Asia’s (ROTA) Youth Advisory Board hosted the event at the DeBaKey High School, Doha, on the 16Th of January. The main purpose of the event was educating the participants on the use of sports as a vital tool in establishing peace, social development and to address the Millennium Development Goals.
“The event provided a platform for us to share our experiences in the use of sports as a vehicle for social change and establishing civil peace,” said Mr. Mohammed Abdulla, ROTA’s Community Development Manager. “In addition, sport is an ideal medium to enhance personal health, build life skills, and to encourage cooperation amongst individuals or groups of people. It is our hope that participants pass on the knowledge they learned over the event to other people in their communities.”
This event, under the auspices of UNOSDP’s Youth Development Camp 2012 for Development and Peace’ was a pilot program that trained 30 youth on the use of sports to drive positive change in their communities. In the future, they will also be further trained in the subject to improve their literacy on the topic. The one-day camp was organized around lectures about the topics of leadership, live-skills, decision-making, problem solving, teamwork, and other subjects.
Participants were pleasantly surprised to learn that sports can be used to drive change. Nada Issam, a student at Debakey remarked:
“I just found out the significant role that sports could play in driving change. Local leaders and experts in sports for development and peace provided us with lessons on health, education, the underprivileged, and peace. Awareness of these subjects can be raised using sports, so that action can be taken to deal with them.”
The camp is part of a series of events held globally by UNOSDP in partnership with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) with a vested interest in the topic. This includes ‘The Right to Play’ based in Canada, the Aspire Foundation here in Qatar, and other organizations that provided both expertise and in-kind donations to program. Additionally, sporting organizations have also been heavily involved, namely the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for Special Needs, the international federations of judo, basketball, and tennis, and England’s Liverpool Football Club.
