Inspire Sport & LeadershipThe 30-year civil war brutalised Sri Lanka. The fighting has stopped but the wounds of the conflict between communities have yet to heal. In Sri Lanka, the one binding force and common, shared language is that of cricket. Sport, more than any other force, has the potential to build bridges and heal wounds here.
Through the Inspire sport and leadership programme, we are helping young people and local communities in Batticaloa on the east coast and rural communities in the Wanni region of Sri Lanka to develop their leadership and inter-personal skills. We will use the programme to reach out into local communities using sport as a way for bringing them together to play and to build a peaceful future. Work So Far In March 2016 we ran a shortened version of the Inspire programme for 50 children in the Wanni region in order to begin the process of establishing a sport and leadership programme for young people in the area. In January 2017 we ran a facilitation workshop for 12 young people and then a two day sport and leadership programme for 36 young people from Batticaloa and the surrounding area. Our goal is to create a self-supporting and sustainable development process but we will seek initial aid and support to provide equipment and coaching to enable the local staff to take on the role of coaching and facilitation. These first programmes have provided information to help us plan the necessary support including further programmes and coaching/facilitation support to move towards self-sufficiency. We visited Sri Lanka in November 2017 in partnership with Kickstart, a charity working with Tamils in the north of the country and Building Bridges, a charity based in Colombo. We ran an Inspire programme in Batticaloa using football, netball, cricket and rugby as the sports. |