- Title: UK: Sport has the power to do good says former prime minister Tony Blair
- Date: 14th June 2008
- Summary: LONDON, UK (JUNE 12, 2008) (REUTERS) GROSVENOR SQUARE STREET SIGN READING GROSVENOR SQUARE
- Embargoed: 29th June 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky,Sports
- Reuters ID: LVABN9H7LPWWXOJAPU4WUIUVYU7G
- Story Text: Former British prime minister Tony Blair launches 'Beyond Sport' initiative in London.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched Beyond Sport, a new global initiative on Thursday (June 12).
He will be Chairman of the Ambassadors for Beyond Sport, hoping to to support projects around the world which promote social inclusion, education and community.
"The idea behind beyond sport is that sports has got enormous power in the world today to do good. There are fantastic projects where people are using sport to bring people together, to make a difference to help kids that are in difficulty, poverty or at risk, either to themselves or to others.
So there is all this fantastic work going on using sport as a force for good and we want to recognise it which is the purpose of the awards, we want to debate how we can expand it and extend it which is the purpose of the forum and we want to back it which is the purpose of the foundation." Blair told Reuters.
Whilst Beyond Sport awards will reward outstanding individuals and projects, there will be an annual two day forum where leading figures from the world of sport, media, politics and industry will join together to discuss how sport can be used as a catalyst for social change.
"I think what constitutes success for us is by profiling and backing and supporting this type of Beyond Sport activity, in other words the way people are using sport say to get kids off street crime, or drugs or prostitution or you know make a difference in bringing people that have been in conflict with each other together. If we can increase significantly the cumulative effect of that." Blair told Reuters.
Luke Dowdney is the founder and director of exactly the type of project that Beyond Sport aims to support.
Fight for Peace is an international non-profit organisation that provides alternatives for children and young people in disadvantaged communities via social inclusion through boxing and martial arts.
Having had great success with the project in Rio de Janeiro over the past seven years, Dowdney opened a Fight for Peace centre in east London last year.
The former amateur boxer told Reuters that the response to the project had been extremely positive.
"We have had an amazing response here that we did not expect. We have been open just under six months and we have had six hundred kids join the project without any advertising whatsoever and they are all from within the local community or very nearby we have had young people take part in the project to the extent that they refer to it as the Fight for Peace family, and that is something that Brazilian kids have done after eight years of the project, and already within six months we have young people on the youth council in Britain saying fight for peace family, this is where we are, this is something that we are part of and Fight for Peace is very much about that." - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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