adidas supports organizations worldwide which are driving social change through sports in the fields of peace, human rights, education, anti-discrimination and social integration. The focus is always on children and adolescents. Right now, for example, I am just back from a trip to Kenya, where we are partnering with an orphanage, a primary school and a school in a slum close to Mombasa. I was there with seven adidas volunteers. We all had one common goal for the upcoming 12 days: Making the world a better place through sport. Being back, sitting in my office, I have to admit that I am struggling with my feelings and the extreme cultural differences between the Kenyan life and our life: they face extreme poverty in a material sense but are so much richer than we are concerning values that really matter in life.
Sport is a great tool to break down barriers, teach life skills and encourage kids and teenagers to believe in themselves
I am very proud of my team of volunteers and of what we have achieved in these one and a half weeks on site. I am well aware that it’s nearly always the same for me and the volunteers when we come home from such a trip: The volunteer team and I always experience an intellectual, emotional and cultural exchange which makes you asking a lot of questions. We were donating moments of love, fun and happiness and got so much more back.
Yes, we achieved a lot of things in Kenya: We trained the local trainers, organized and participated with the kids in sports tournaments, checked on the projects’ progresses since our last visit and arranged other programs like computer lessons or painting or sewing classes at school (some school uniforms were in really bad shape, buttons were lost, holes all over the dresses).
We realized again that kids are all the same around the globe and how happy they are when you just give them attention and some of your time. At the same time, sport is such a great tool to break down barriers, teach life skills such as fair play, tolerance, self-confidence, reliability, discipline, team spirit, mutual understanding and to encourage kids and teenagers to believe in themselves so that they are able to see and create new and positive perspectives for their lives and their community.
“I can’t get rid of those pictures from Bangladesh”
But then again, I can’t get rid (and don’t want to) of those pictures from Bangladesh, a slum close to Mombasa. We extended our training to this slum this year for the first time. Nobody really knows how many people are living there but there are lots. Most of them are there illegally – as the land is owned by the government – and do not have regular jobs. Crime is big in Bangladesh. Also kids – often forced by their own parents – are part of it. Kids are used to delivering drugs in water tanks, pretending they would go to get some water for the family. And this is how kids get involved in drugs, too. The Aids rate there is around 30%. Gabriel, an Irish pastor living in Kenya since the mid-1980s and fighting for human rights, built a school and a medical station in “Bangala” – and also facilitates sports tournaments and trainings. He can tell a lot of stories about the tough and rude life in this slum. But his strong will and power to support those people and change their lives to a better one, is so huge that, when we first met him last year, it was soon pretty clear that we will support him with what we can best – sports.
Every ascent of a mountain starts with a first step
With this mountain of real problems in front of you (compared to the things we tend to consider as problems back home), you can easily get scared of your own goals and maybe get as well frustrated that what you are doing might not matter at all. But every ascent of a mountain starts with a first step. We will not change the world immediately but we can help to make it better.
What we did with our partners in Kenya is based on the thought that sport can be used as a tool to encourage kids to believe in themselves and also keep them away from drugs. Therefore we participated and supported a football tournament with the message: Kick drugs out of schools! A big event for everybody; for kids – girls and boys teams – because of the activity and the attention they got; and for volunteers because they could see with their own eyes what a change sport is able to make in a community – and that it matters what they are doing; we’ll just have to remind ourselves from time to time of that and keep the work up.
If you like to see a bit more about our trip to Kenya, just click through the pictures below.
