Jean-Baptiste Alaize, Champion for Peace, Olympian and four-time world champion in the under-23 long jump, was a victim of the Tutsi genocide in 1994. When he was only 3 years old, he witnessed the murder of his mother, seriously injured by machete blows and left for dead. He miraculously survived but had to have his tibia amputated. At the age of 7, he was adopted by Danièle and Robert Alaize and settled in a village in the Drôme region of France.
Aminata Makou Traore is a Taekwondoist and the President of APJS Mali, a partner organization from the Peacemakers Project. While sport remains a « poor relation » in Mali, she describes the actions of APJS to accelerate social development in Mali.
« We support the projects of Malian athletes, in particular for their conversion. We help out-of-school children to bring them, through sport, an activity, and an education. We organize seminars for business leaders to convince them of the importance of investing in sports. We are at the origin of an International Forum on Sport, in which Peace and Sport has participated since 2019. But we never lose sight of the specific context of Mali, a country where agriculture still needs a vast amount of manual labour and thousands of villages lack drinking water. We are the first association to bring sport for women to neighbourhoods, through a program called “Sport between neighbours”. We also organized a collective march, the “Parcours des Yelenis”, in collaboration with the Olympic Committee of Mali. »
Cristian Saénz is one of the peace animators of the PeacemakersProject in Colombia, alongside the NGO Cop Colombia International. Cristian has been playing football for as long as he can remember, and his passion for football goes above all else. He said that “we need to believe in ourselves to achieve our dreams, and this is something that I want to teach to children. When I was younger, I wanted to become a professional soccer player. Today, my dream is to continue working as a sport trainer, and to help children to achieve their dreams through sport.” He also added “Usme, my hometown, needs more sports facilities. For all sports, and not only for soccer. Over the last few years, Colombian institutions have made efforts to provide more sports trainings in all sports disciplines. I believe that it is a good way to help build a better future for our country.”
Julieth Alejandra Fuquene Alarcón, peace animator of the Peacemakers Project alongside Cop Colombia International, shared with us her passion for sports and how she wants to support children in her community. She practices taekwondo since the age of 10 and she started to practice football at 16 years old. In her free time, she likes to practice other sports such as tennis, volleyball, basketball, and sometimes archery. In the future, she would like to keep teaching football to kids. Working with children inspires her. With them, she feels that she is growing and learning new things every day.
Since December 2021, the #PeacemakersProject is implemented in 4 schools in Rwanda in partnership with AKWOS – the Organization of Kigali Women in Sports. Clementine Kagarama is a teacher and peace animator in Ape Rugunga School, in Kigali.
Thacien Uwagirinshuti is a teacher at Sainte Famille School, a primary and secondary school located in Kigali, Rwanda. He explains how children’s behavior can change thanks to the peace-through-sport sessions of the Peace and Sport Methodology.
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