Like most people who work in youth sports programs around the world, Clement Chileshe sees recreation as a means to promote physical fitness and teach children important lessons, but he believes it can play an even more important role in his native Zambia.
There and in other sub-Saharan African countries ravaged by an HIV/AIDS epidemic, Chileshe says, it’s a matter of life and death.
“These children have this natural energy which has to be expended,” Chileshe said. “If their affinity for recreation or leisure is not provided for in the right way, they will find other ways. Sex is one of the popular recreational activities the young people are finding now, just like heavy alcohol intake, like drug abuse, like violence. It’s recreation for them.”
Chileshe was in Denver on Thursday to attend the International Summit on Youth Sports, where delegates from around the world discussed how to expand recreational opportunities in the world’s poorest countries. The meeting was sponsored by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, which collects sports equipment and sponsors sports programs for poor countries.
The United Nations has declared 2005 the International Year of Sport and Physical Education in an effort to combat poverty and the spread of AIDS, which killed an estimated 2.3 million Africans in 2004.
AIDS kills 200 people a day in Zambia, a country of 10.3 million people formerly known as Northern Rhodesia. The incidence of AIDS in Zambia’s urban areas exceeds 20 percent. More than 500,000 children have been orphaned.
“It’s the biggest socioeconomic problem Zambia has,” said Chileshe, who directs a nongovernmental program for Zambian youths called Sport in Action. “All the people are trying to see how we can come up with interventions, and sports is one of the best intervention methods for young people.”
But providing sports in poverty-stricken countries requires international help to create facilities and supply equipment. The International Olympic Committee spent nearly $300 million of its television revenue in the four years leading up to the Athens Olympics to help athletes in poor countries through a program known as Olympic Solidarity. About $15 million went to national sports organizations in Africa.
Loreen Bannis-Roberts, a government minister and parliament member in the tiny east Caribbean nation of Dominica, attended an international youth sports congress in 2003 and was inspired to start a program for children ages 5-12. It became a pilot effort funded by the National Alliance for Youth Sports.
“The whole idea of not having adequate and proper equipment was a major issue for us,” Bannis-Roberts said. “The equipment we had was not tailored to small children. Thank God for the National Alliance for Youth Sports, they have decided to provide us with the appropriate equipment for the implementation of the various sports programs we have, so we no longer have this major challenge providing our children with proper equipment.”
The Florida-based National Alliance for Youth Sports, which is funded by members and grants, collects equipment in a program called Global Gear Drive.
“We’re working with recreation departments and manufacturers, saying, ‘You have all this equipment laying around that is used but usable that these children across the world could find very helpful,”‘ said Fred Engh, NAYS founder and president.
NAYS also funds Game On, which advises sports officials in poor countries how to set up recreational programs like the one in Dominica. Bannis-Roberts introduced baseball to her island of 70,000, which caught on because cricket is the major sport there.
Her message to delegates at Thursday’s summit: Don’t be afraid to start small.
“The important thing is to have a vision for what you want to do,” Bannis-Roberts said. “Whatever we do in life, the children must always benefit. I think every country in the world should embrace the opportunity and introduce Game On.”
Staff writer John Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com.
