Author: Ana Geppert, Masters student of Global Health at VU Amsterdam, intern with the ALL Institute at Maynooth University, in partnership with Loughborough University.
Social Lives
Sport can be a powerful tool contributing to community development. Engagement in Sports has the ability to unify people from the most diverse backgrounds, as well as strengthen the relationship we have with ourselves. In many ways, the practice of engaging in Sport (in the broadest sense of the concept) is like accessing a gateway to so many different levels of society. From our closest surrounding context (micro level) to the highest structures of society (macro level). It can help accessing community services and assistive technologies, which are all crucial to community development. In my discussion today, I am speaking about Sport broadly – not elite-level performance, but rather the every-day sports practices many of us engage in. Encompassing everything from physical activity, to exercise but also recreational play.
As a third culture kid (someone who was raised in a culture other than my parents’ culture and my passport’s nationality) I have often experienced being or at least feeling like an outsider or the feeling of being different to the rest of people around me. When engaging in sports, however, I gained a lot of respect from my classmates and I felt like I belonged. This helped strengthen my self-esteem and realize my differences could be used to an advantage to the group’s goal.
Through Sports I found a collective of people which could not be more “different” when looking from the outside, but we all had something in common which united us and was more powerful than our differences. This powerfully synergistic tool that Sports can be has accompanied me my entire life and allowed me to explore and forge my identity, my sense of community and what it means to belong.
Participating in Sports forces you to stay in the present, to focus on the task at hands and find solutions together whilst aiming at a common goal. Isn‘t that just what we need more of in our world today?
Sport can also help to bridge differences due to an impairment an individual lives with. Unfortunately, engagement in Sport for people with disabilities is not as easy as it might be for able-bodied peers. People with disability often lack access to appropriate programming, support networks, or the assistive technologies needed to engage in Sport. To put my own life as an example once again, I have used glasses since I was little and even though this might now be a very easy to access assistive product for many, not everyone has access to the products they need (including glasses) to experience healthy, productive, independent and dignified lives.
It is therefore a collective responsibility to ensure all people have access to assistive technology which enhances us to be a more equitable society and allow increased participation in Sports. Equity is not the same as equality. Every person is different, and in an equitable society this is exactly the focus point. People are not supported all in the exact same way, but rather each individual‘s need should be acknowledged and taken into consideration when trying to facilitate access to live out their full potential.
Participating in Sports, and making sure people are able to participate in Sport can be a bridge to reaching a more united and equitable world, embracing the potential our differences can bring to the team instead of seeing them as barriers. Sports can be a gateway to community development. Therefore, on the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace let us consider how we can work to give all people a chance to participate in Sports.