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12 / 06 / 2004
Lars Grael: “In the words of our president, only Ronaldo can bring our people together”
Lars Grael, Faezeh Hashemi and Mauricio Macri have taken part in the session “Sport, instrument for integration, living in peace and social cohesion?” They highlighted the integrating role of sporting activities on a professional and amateur level
The Secretary for Youth, Sport and Leisure from the state of São Paulo in Brazil, Lars Grael, took part in a plenary session dealing with sport as a tool for integration and along these lines said “in the words of our president, only Ronaldo can bring our people together”. Grael went on to add that older players such as Ronaldo and Pelé have an important social role to play through their foundations, which bring hope to many young people.
Grael explained some of the programs that the Secretariat for Youth, Sport and Leisure runs to strengthen the positive aspect of sport. He said that in some neighborhoods of São Paulo the “Midnight Sport” program has been set up “has managed to reduce the level of street violence by 50%”. In addition, Grael also went on to mention the solidarity sports programs set up by the soccer player Pelé in which 800,000 people have already taken part. Projects have also been set up in prisons where prisoners make sports materials and can use these programs to shorten the length of their prison sentences.
Faezeh Hashemi, vice president of the Iranian Olympic Committee spoke of the Women’s Olympics that have been held in her country since 2001 and which will be held again in 2005. In this sense Hashemi explained that these games, open to Muslim women from all over the world, are intended to be open up to other cultures “as long as these cultures respect the rules and customs of Islam”. Hashemi mentioned that women taking part in the games have to respect the fact that men are not allowed to participate and that they have to wear typical Muslim dress. Hashemi added that these games help a lot of women who were previously unable to take part in sports and is a form of social cohesion. In spite of this, Hashemi went on to say, “it is a show of solidarity, an introduction to sport, though it is not the answer for peace between many countries”. In reference to these games, he also added “we cannot prevent Israel from committing crimes against the people of Palestine”.
The president of Argentina’s Boca Juniors, Mauricio Macri, highlighted the fact that in the developing countries “sport is a tool that can be used to integrate people into the system and serves to get a lot of children off the streets”. Macri spoke of soccer grounds as “the tool that breaks through social inequality for a couple of hours and manages to make everybody forget their differences at least while they’re on the field”. In addition, Macri touched on the values taught by sports such as “sacrifice, knowing how to lose and teamwork.” For Macri “sport disconnects us from the madness of the present-day world and reconnects us with the child we have inside us”. The president of Boca Juniors added that his club lends emphasis to training athletes and for this reason has set up schools where besides teaching sports, athletes receive academic training”.
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