Sport for Development
While sport has a value in everybody’s life, it is even more important in the life of an individual with a disability.
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For Every Child, the right to play
UNICEF has spent more than 60 years advocating for children’s rights, which means a lot of experience with sport and the right of play for children.
UNICEF’s work with sport is grounded in its mission to ensure that every child has the right to play and sport in a safe and healthy environment – a right founded in Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international treaties.
Team UNICEF is a new platform to feature the many activities, events and processes UNICEF has in place to promote sport and the right of play, together with a spirit of collaboration, teamwork and energy that sport evokes.
Sport and physical activity are essential for improving child health and wellbeing, an aim integral to Millennium Development Goal 4. Evidence shows that regular participation in physical activity provides all people, regardless of ability, with a wide range of physical, social and mental health benefits, and can prevent or limit the effects of many of the world's leading non-communicable diseases. In addition, sporting events and sport celebrities provide special opportunities to mobilize communities to support immunization, hand washing and other public health campaigns.
Access to sports can be limited to children because of socioeconomic factors, gender, education and ability.
Sport is for everyone
In UNICEF we believe that sport is more than competitions or entertainment. Sport can have a positive effect on one’s body and mind. It builds strength, boost confidence and teaches independence.
The popularity of sport makes it a wonderful tool to attract, mobilize, inspire and engage children and adolescents in other activities with far greater goals in mind.
Therefore, integrating sport into UNICEF ongoing programs and activities to increase children and adolescent’s participation, improve their physical and mental well-being and strengthen the social inclusion of particularly marginalized and vulnerable groups is a priority for UNICEF in Belarus over the next two years.
using sport as a tool to achieve programmatic objectives especially in the areas of child protection and adolescent participation. Both can subsequently be leveraged for building strong partnerships and global advocacy.
UNICEF approach to success is two-fold:
to work in the sport sector, with children and adolescents as well as coaches, educators and officials to ensure that sport is safe, inclusive and accessible to all.
to use sport as a tool to achieve programmatic objectives especially in the areas of child protection and adolescent participation.
Development of Amateur Sport
Healthy lifestyle extends to addressing mental health problems. Most recent research by UNICEF has found that an alarming 26% of children in Belarus show symptoms of depression.
Sport is a widely known antidote to depression: it triggers the release of the four so-called happy hormones: endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin.
To promote playing sports, we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Association of Belarus Football Federation (ABFF). We have many joint projects including the supporting girls’ football teams and family events.
One of them is our family football "Mama, Papa and Me are a Football Family", first held in Minsk in 2016 with only 56 families participating. Since the partnership between ABFF and UNICEF, the festival has continued to grow, and in 2018 it attracted 1010 families.
Development of Adaptive Sports
The importance of both recreational and competitive sports for people with disabilities can’t be overestimated. For formerly able-bodied people who found themselves disabled, sports can serve as a big motivation in the process of rehabilitation and can help alleviate the depression and loss of self-confidence and for those who were born with a serious disability, sports can serve as an important way of connecting to the others.
One way to include people with disabilities in physical exercises is through Adaptive sports. These are based on existing able-bodied sports but modified to meet the needs of people with disabilities.
The aim is to encourage higher quality participation by people with disability, both with or away from their able-bodied peers. Clubs can provide a range of options by adapting and modifying their sport in different environments.
UNICEF and Volunteers at the 2nd European Games 2019
UNICEF in Belarus is the non-commercial Social Legacy partner of 2nd European Games 2019 in Minsk.
Both MEGOC and UNICEF recognize sport as a fundamental right of every child all over the world, implementation of which is a guarantee of their harmonious physical, socio-economic and intellectual development.
The partnership is founded on the desire to develop and strengthen the cooperation in the area of development of the personality, talents, intellectual and physical capacities of children to their full potential, ensuring equal opportunities for cultural and creative activities and leisure by means of educational and humanitarian legacy of the 2nd European Games.
Together we aim to:
- Promote sports as a means of protection of children’s rights and resolution of social problems;
- Stimulation of cognitive activity of children and youth through games, contests and interactive educational activities;
- Promotion of responsible parenting and harmonious development of children;
- Promotion of family values and raising children in two-parent families;
- Streamlining of social inclusion;
- Promotion of safe and healthy lifestyle;
- Promote youth civic engagement and participation;
- Raising awareness of children about their rights;
- Raising funds to protect the most vulnerable children.
To ensure the long-term social legacy of the European Games, we have attracted a team of dedicated volunteers from 10 cities of Belarus who help us in the events before, during and after the games, as well as in other projects.
Torch Bearers on behalf of UNICEF
UNICEF in Belarus has nominated 3 children from vulnerable groups to join the Torch Relay held prior to the Games and bear the Torch on behalf of UNICEF — Alexei Gaponchik, winner of the Fair Play award at the National football tournament for children deprived of parental care; Yuliya Stefnyak,a full-time university student with cerebral palsy and a UNICEF volunteer; and Tatyana Filonets, a young model with Down syndrome and the face of UNICEF in Belarus charity project “Family for every child”.
