Helping Kids Around the World with Sports

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.

Peace-Building and Sports in Schools

Sports can help reintegrate child soldiers into society

Sports can help reintegrate child soldiers into society

One of the primary uses of sports in schools in certain areas of the world is to reintegrate child soldiers back into their former communities and social settings. As one might imagine, it is difficult to get a former soldier who is only a child to get back into his school chairs and behind his school desks.

According to a UN study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children found that governments and armed groups all over the world have forced tens of thousands of children under the age of 18 and even sometimes under the age of 10, during the past three decades. The report states that these children are in dire need of intellectual and emotional stimulation which can be provided by structured group activities like play, sports, drawing and storytelling.

According to the research, there is evidence that sports can help children and youth who have been recruited to participate in armed conflicts. Sports can draw these children out of violent behaviors and routines by offering a socially acceptable alternative; structured patterns of behavior which are associated with sports activities.