October 21, 2022 – We are very proud to announce that WPDI and the Swedish Postcode Foundation recently renewed our partnership, with an agreement that will allow WPDI to expand our Peace Through Sports program across South Sudan and Uganda over the next two years. The partnership will allow us to reach more locations and more than 25,000 children and youth who will be given the opportunity to engage in sports and peacebuilding activities. The aim is to benefit themselves and their communities in terms of health, civic empowerment, psychosocial support and, simply put, personal development as a condition of peace and sustainable development.
Sharing an ambition to pursue the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in dynamic and innovative ways, WPDI and the Swedish Postcode Foundation had already partnered from 2016 to 2018 to help us strengthen the foundations of our core programs in South Sudan and Uganda, and in 2020 to assist our work on the ground to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in remote areas of these countries. Our collaboration with the Postcode Foundation has therefore led to important achievements and lasting results on the ground – but there was more to accomplish together. The Foundation was looking for creative approaches to disseminating a culture of peace and reconciliation of conflict- and violence-affected areas. We at WPDI were striving to renew and expand our Peace Through Sports program after having piloted and implemented it for years with children and youth living in contexts of displacement.
The idea for this program came to Forest Whitaker when he visited a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in South Sudan in 2014. The children and youths he saw there were left to themselves and left to deal with trauma alone, with few outlets other than their dreams of exacting vengeance on whomever had brought suffering to their lives. Seeking to offer them psychosocial support while educating them on peacebuilding, Mr. Whitaker recognized that sports was, thanks to its values of cooperation, tolerance and respect for rules, a perfect vehicle to cultivate values of peace in a way that would entertain and motivate children and young people.
Combining sports activities – training sessions and competitive games – with peacebuilding workshops and conferences, Peace Through Sports has proved very effective in recent years for disseminating positive values among young people who have grown up in the context of conflict, violence or fragility. The success of the program was obtained through the patient work of our trained coaches and experts who encouraged, among others, individuals from conflicting tribes to play together and learn from each other. The program also proved highly effective for empowering girls and female adolescents in contexts where traditional norms often prevent them from leaving their homes. With many other benefits down the road and partnerships with football national associations in South Sudan and Uganda, we were ready to take the program to a new scale – which is the very purpose of our new partnership with the Postcode Foundation.
Implemented in eight locations across the two countries, the expanded Peace Through Sports program will help us disseminate values of peace to more children, more youth and more beneficiaries. It will also subsequently be able to organize many more games and awareness events. Beyond the 25,000+ individuals that we expect to reach over two years, we will also work to highlight the unique value of sports as a platform for peace education. Encouraging decision makers to mainstream such an approach in peacebuilding work at large, we hope to fulfill our dual mandate to promote peace both through action on the ground and through advocacy work.
About the Swedish Postcode Foundation
The Swedish Postcode Lottery believes that a strong civil society is essential for creating a better world. The Postcode Foundation is one of the 59 beneficiaries of the Swedish Postcode Lottery and receives part of the Lottery’s surplus. The Foundation’s goal is to carry out the Swedish Postcode Lottery’s mission through projects that challenge, inspire and promote Change.
Since 2007, The Postcode Foundation has distributed over 1.8 million Swedish Kronor to non- governmental organizations (NGOs) in Sweden and internationally, that actively contribute to the global goals and create positive changes through concrete efforts. We dare to support those – who think of innovative solutions and are pioneers in their work.
