In May of this year, 12 Notre Dame students, accompanied by Notre Dame Athletics and Play Like a Champion Today™ staff will be going to Uganda for a trip geared at promoting youth sports in the country. To learn more about the trip read here.
Uganda has been in the news a lot these days. The Kony 2012 video, showing the horrors of the life of children in Northern Uganda recently went viral. Earlier this week, a story came out about a mystifying “nodding disease” in the same region that crippling thousands of children with epileptic-like symptoms (read here).
In light of these news stories, a trip to promote youth sports might be seen as a little strange. The safety of the American students and the worthiness of the trip might be called into question. However, this trip is a worthy endeavor for a number of reasons, and here’s just a few:
1. There is a clear link between human development and sports. Sports provide physical benefits to those who participate, increasing their mental health as well as their cardio-vascular well-being. Although AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis often dominate the health challenges in developing countries, heart disease is still the number one cause of health problems and death in the developing world. Sports also promote a good quality of life, by creating a shared space for people to flourish together without stigma that might be caused by gender, religion, ethnicity, or medical issues. This is all in addition to a host of social, economic, and educational benefits gained by incorporating sports into human development that you can read about here.
2. The University of Notre Dame is complementing work that is already in progress in Uganda. Having worked in Uganda for a year and a half, I learned that nothing can be done by well-intentioned outsiders without support and ownership from domestic stakeholders in Uganda. PLC’s trip is meant to assist in the development of the Physical education curriculum in the country, and to support research being done by professors at Ugandan Martyrs University about physical education’s role on the development of children.
3. The Notre Dame students will never be the same. The word “Africa” can stir up a number of images in our heads. Wildlife on the savannah, tribal warriors in traditional dress, war, and injustice are some of the images of the continent that end up in the US. But even a short visit such as this one will show our students that there is so much more to Uganda than what we read and see. It is a safe place of incredible joy and astounding beauty. It is a troubled place where most people are very poor and unstable. It is a country that is working hard to combat those problems in the realms of education, economics, and human rights. And Uganda is home to some of the kindest, friendliest people on the planet, eager to welcome visitors into their culture. The trip will challenge our students to examine their own values, possessions, and lifestyles. It will open their eyes to the positive role that youth sports and the Play Like a Champion Today™ model can play in promoting good child development both down the street and across the globe.
We are very much looking forward to this endeavor, and partnering with Ugandans in villages, in higher education, and in government departments. We have seen the good work that the Play Like a Champion Today™ model can do in our country, and we are looking forward to using its core values of integrity, inclusion, and character development to touch people’s lives around the world!
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