Bri­an Lewis

There is a cadre of hard­work­ing peo­ple who put their heart and soul in­to the de­vel­op­ment of young peo­ple through sport every sin­gle day of life.They do it pure­ly for the love of sport. They are liv­ing their pas­sion.These vol­un­teers are not al­ways sure the de­ci­sion mak­ers and those with ac­cess to the re­sources ap­pre­ci­ate their tire­less and un­wa­ver­ing ef­forts and sin­cer­i­ty.All these tire­less sol­diers want is a sim­ple ac­knowl­edge­ment–a thank you but in­stead they feel un­want­ed and dis­re­spect­ed.Na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs) can­not af­ford to be dis­con­nect­ed from the cadre of vol­un­teers who make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence on a dai­ly ba­sis.The sport in­fra­struc­ture will col­lapse with­out vol­un­teers.The pow­er of sport to ef­fect change is most ev­i­dent at the grass­roots lev­el where peo­ple come to­geth­er to ex­plore the use of sport as a cat­a­lyst for so­cial change. Over the years sport has shown that it can have a pos­i­tive im­pact.

En­cour­ag­ing those who con­tribute to keep do­ing so is not as chal­leng­ing as some may make it out to be.All that is re­quired is re­spect for the com­mit­ment, ded­i­ca­tion and pas­sion of those who give to sport out of an abun­dance of love.The sim­ple be­lief that sport can make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence and that to­geth­er we can achieve re­mark­able things is the mo­ti­va­tion for hun­dreds of vol­un­teers.That the is­sues may be more com­plex in no way di­min­ish­es their con­tri­bu­tion. As Mark Twain once said; "great peo­ple are those who make oth­ers feel that they too can be­come great. "How many lives have the tire­less and un­wa­ver­ing foot sol­diers–the vol­un­teers changed for the bet­ter?On any giv­en day look around the play­ing fields and emp­ty spaces and you will see some­one ded­i­cat­ed to us­ing sport to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence.These in­di­vid­u­als use sport to com­mu­ni­cate sim­ple life val­ues and to mo­ti­vate and in­spire youths from dif­fer­ent back­grounds.Some do so in­di­vid­u­al­ly while oth­ers are very in­volved in sport and com­mu­ni­ty clubs.As we come to the end of 2013 here in T&T, De­cem­ber is not usu­al­ly the most ac­tive-sport­ing wise.

It's an ap­pro­pri­ate pe­ri­od to take a step back and re­flect.Sport lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly is at a cross roads. A lot of change is com­ing.To keep pace both the TTOC and NSOs have to in­no­vate and evolve if they want to en­gage young peo­ple in sport as ac­tive par­tic­i­pants.The same can be said about the IOC.An­oth­er chal­lenge is find­ing the del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween work­ing with gov­ern­ment while main­tain­ing a nec­es­sary lev­el of in­de­pen­dence and au­ton­o­my.No chal­lenge is big enough.How do we ad­vo­cate the pos­i­tive val­ues that sport can in­stil in young peo­ple and pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of sport? How can NSOs and the TTOC pro­mote pos­i­tive mes­sages about sport and its char­ac­ter build­ing po­ten­tial, in­tegri­ty and hon­esty giv­en the pow­er­ful temp­ta­tions fac­ing al­most every­one in­volved in sport? How can NSOs build eq­ui­ty and val­ue in their brands and as­sets?By re­spond­ing to the con­tem­po­rary re­al­i­ties none of the chal­lenges are in­sur­mount­able on the con­trary there are op­por­tu­ni­ties aplen­ty for those sport or­gan­i­sa­tions that can mar­ket them­selves dif­fer­ent­ly, more ef­fec­tive­ly and cre­ative­ly. It re­quires cre­ative de­struc­tion–a rein­ven­tion and a trans­for­ma­tion while at the same time re­main­ing true to the core val­ues, and ac­knowl­edg­ing the role of the vol­un­teers in an era of pro­fes­sion­al­i­sa­tion.The po­ten­tial is enor­mous for those NSOs who are will­ing to push the en­ve­lope and re­de­fine how they act, think and be­have. The fu­ture is bright in­deed. Sport mat­ters, in­tegri­ty mat­ters, peo­ple mat­ter and the youth mat­ter.

Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the TTOC. For more in­for­ma­tion about the IOC, TTOC and Olymp­ism vis­it www.ttoc.org