Using football to reconcile people
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Jakob Silas Lund is the founder of Play31, a peace-building organization that uses football to bring together people who have been torn apart by war.
The Right to Play
Jakob Silas Lund is the founder of Play31, a peace-building organization that uses football to bring together people who have been torn apart by war.
The name refers to the 31st article of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that all children in the world have the right to play. There were two characteristics of the Sierra Leonean people that particularly moved Jakob when he volunteered with a local human rights organization in the country in late 2007.
One was their ability and desire to move on and start the process of reconciliation after the brutal civil war that had ravaged the country. The other was their love for the Beautiful Game. He realized that these two qualities could be brought together to create social change. Since then, Play31 has reached over 50,000 people in Sierra Leone and won several awards for their work combining sports and conflict resolution.
Jakob’s talk gives examples of how this process works at a micro-level and suggests that it oftentimes takes less than we think to make a difference and bring people together.
Links:
play31.org