The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the interconnectedness of efforts required to safeguard our future. With the adoption of the SDGs, we have an unprecedented opportunity to link the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace to a broader global platform. We can use this opportunity to showcase the valuable linkages between sport and realization of other SDGs, such as health, education and gender. Using sport as a point of convergence, the sport for development and peace community can highlight how we work collaboratively across sectors to deliver integrated and lasting solutions.
Lori Galway, Policy Manager, Right To Play
April 6 is a unique opportunity for the peace through sport movement to gain better recognition amongst the general public. This event is empowering sport to enjoy increased credibility about its capacity to address problems in society. Every day, new stakeholders are joining our movement, confident that sport can make a difference. Our objective this year is to firmly establish April 6 as an event that reaches out beyond the sports community, so that it also mobilises the peace movement. Peace and Sport's april6.org is a platform for expression and promotion aimed at highlighting the initiatives led to celebrate April 6, and a participatory and interactive tool enabling everyone to take part in this special day!
Joël Bouzou, President and Founder, Peace and Sport
Sport and development has grown over the last decade and gained even more legitimacy as a result of being mentioned in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda. In that sense there is a window of opportunity for governments to use the concept and make it more well-known. However, this requires leadership from sport and development actors, as well as the willingness to coordinate and cooperate. Right now it seems that organisations are interested in positioning themselves. The sector needs to practice what it preaches – the values of sport beyond sport. The IDSDP is a good occasion to do that.
Marc Probst, Executive Director, Swiss Academy for Development
Establishing active local and global networks through platforms or forums would better facilitate cooperation and collaboration for the IDSDP, stimulating various levels of communication, interaction and exchanges not only among SDP organisations but also between SDP community and relevant stakeholders which have common objectives under the sphere of the Sustainable Development Goals. Such platforms or forums could guide them to perceive their activities from different perspectives, connect them with the universal values we all share and strengthen the role sport can play, broadening the IDSDP movement.
Julie Lee Hyunju, Acting Head of Office - Geneva and Partnership Development Officer, UNOSDP
The annual International Day of Sport for Development and Peace on April 6 is a unique opportunity to celebrate, engage and reflect on the power of sport in policy, research and practice. This year will be a wonderful opportunity to highlight sport within the Sustainable Development Goals, and in our view, is the time to engage more fully across the development and peace sectors as well as within the sports sector, develop new relationships with journalists and the media, and bring sport for development and peace awareness and curriculum to more schools and universities.
Eli A. Wolff, Brown University and Mary A. Hums, University of Louisville
Photo by leah hetteberg
