Monthly Archives: February 2014

Helping Kids Around the World with Sports

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It takes a lot more than classroom furniture to educate our children today. Students need well-equipped sports programs, music programs and art programs in their schools and out. For instance, for at-risk kids there might be nothing better than teaching those kids sports.

Everyone Everywhere Loves Sports

Everyone Everywhere Loves Sports

One such organization that is doing just that is the Progressive Athletics International (PAI). This non-profit organization takes youth who are at-risk and tries to positively influence them by teaching them life skills, leadership, and the crucial nature of education, healthy life-style choices and cultural diversity through sports. PAI operates throughout the world.

The history of athletics in society is a long one, dating back at least 1,000 years. Sports are recognized as a powerful means of bringing diverse cultures together through its common language. No matter what gender, race or ethnic group someone belongs to, athletics has meaning. In recent years sports have been used as a cost-efficient and high-impact method for the furthering of humanitarian, peace-building and economic development aspirations.

In many ways athletics is a mirror image of the society we live in, and can often be just as complicated. Sports is not a magic bullet to solve all development and social problems in a community, but athletics can help to build up individuals and society.

Staying Safe in School Sports

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Keeping Kids Safe in School

Keeping Kids Safe in School

The vast majority of students that participate in school sports find it a positive, beneficial experience. There is a small minority, however, that do not enjoy, and are even put at risk, by sports. Unlike making sure there is appropriate and plentiful school furniture available to students, creating a safe environment for children to participate in sports is often neglected.

There are three main reasons for this neglect: denial, blame and minimization. Clubs, organizations, funding bodies and governments, engage in these reasons to not do anything about keeping children safe. They react by either saying: this does not happen here; it is someone else’s problem; or it is an isolated incident. Due to these types of responses leave children, coaches, clubs, sports bodies, and funding bodies isolated, vulnerable and powerless.

Keeping children safe requires both a preventative component and a reactive part. There must be appropriate policies, practices and procedures in place to limit the harm from occurring in the first place, while there also needs to be procedures, practices and policies to allow all those who participate in sports the ability to report any unsafe activities.