Claro, INSPORTS fuelling social intervention through football

André Lowe, Senior Staff Reporter

For well over 12,000 young men from some 800 communities across the country, the Claro/INSPORTS All-Island Community Football Championship is more than just a competition, and provides for them a lot more than just an avenue to display their skills on the field.

With the participants all considered to be among the most at-risk individuals in the country, many of them coming from and representing some of the most hardened communities in the land, the tournament provides an opportunity for lifestyle changes, an outlet for positive social interaction.

The competition allows once-feuding communities and individuals to put their differences aside and come together in unity and friendly, sporting rivalry.

Essential intervention

This is possible through the key roles being played by a long list of stakeholders, such as the Dispute Resolution Foundation (DRF), National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) and the Jamaica Foun-dation for Lifelong Learning (JFLL), among several others.

These organisations and many other like them have all partnered with the league sponsors Claro and INSPORTS to ensure that the opportunity to ingrain essential social intervention does not go to waste.

The DRF's LaGeorgia Brown-Daley was not shy in underlining the importance of the competition to her organisation, and how it provided for them an opportunity to reach an important demographic that they would otherwise not have access to.

"I would like to commend INSPORTS on the initiative shown to implement such a competition that targets unattached youths across the island. This is helping to bring solidarity to many communities across the country," said Brown-Daley. "We are committed to providing sensitisation sessions in these communities (during the competition) for both the players and officials."

The sessions will, among other things, include sessions on conflict resolution on and off the field, anger management workshops, and so on.

"We are pleased and confident that this partnership will enhance the purpose of this competition and we are happy to be on board," Brown-Daley added. "We provide the platform on which the citizens, communities and entire country can strengthen and expand the use of mediation and other alternatives and effective methods of preventing and resolving disputes."

Oniel Smith, who was representing the NCDA, spoke of his organisation's purpose and why they found it absolutely necessary to jump on board.

"The organisation has the mandate to reduce the use of substance and to promote a healthy lifestyle. It's interesting that our partnership with INSPORTS has come about at this time, because the target group that INSPORTS is trying to reach is a group that we have been trying to reach for a while now, and couldn't reach, so when the opportunity came about we jumped on board," said Smith.

"We have found out that sports is an alternative to the use of substance, because youths who are involved in sports rarely use substance, so this competition is a mutually beneficial one. We are reaching 800 communities that we would not normally be able to reach," he continued.

Social restructuring

Gerry McDaniel, PR and marketing manager at the JFLL, stressed the importance of pulling communities together in the whole social restructuring of the country.

"Communities can do awesome things and communities should recognise the importance of solidarity, of getting together, and so we want to thank INSPORTS and Claro for making sure that they got so many people together for this very important project," McDaniel said.

"We (JFLL) are here to supplement what people didn't get when they went through school, so this competition we see as one big life skills class. Sports will teach us the teamwork we need to produce, it teaches us the competitive edge that we need to stay ahead, it teaches us social skills, it teaches tolerance and volunteerism. We could not stay away from this competition because it underlines all the values we have sold as a company."