“How Lun­y­olo is turn­ing rug­by in­to a plat­form for change.”

​That was the lead head­line of a sto­ry pub­lished on www.mon­i­tor.co.ug. The ar­ti­cle de­tailed the am­bi­tious vi­sion of Regi­na Hellen Okoit Lun­y­olo, a de­ter­mined woman us­ing sport to trans­form her home coun­try of Ugan­da.

​Lun­y­olo found­ed the Swans Sports Club (orig­i­nal­ly En­tebbe La­dy Swans RFC) to dri­ve com­mu­ni­ty health and youth em­pow­er­ment. The club hosts the an­nu­al Swans Beach Rug­by Against Can­cer fes­ti­val at Aero Beach in En­tebbe, Ugan­da, com­bin­ing beach touch rug­by with pub­lic health aware­ness. The event us­es sport as a plat­form to pro­mote ear­ly can­cer de­tec­tion, raise aware­ness, and com­bat non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs). At­ten­dees re­ceive free on-site med­ical ser­vices, in­clud­ing screen­ings for breast, cer­vi­cal, and prostate can­cer, along­side di­a­betes checks and blood pres­sure mon­i­tor­ing. The fes­ti­val al­so fea­tures touch rug­by match­es, tug-of-war, board games, live en­ter­tain­ment, and chil­dren’s ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Tack­ling can­cer to­geth­er through the pow­er of rug­by and com­mu­ni­ty spir­it” best de­scribes Lun­y­olo’s mis­sion.

​I first met Regi­na sev­er­al years ago at the eighth IWG World Con­fer­ence on Women & Sport, held from No­vem­ber 14-17, 2022, in Auck­land, New Zealand. I was in­vit­ed and was part of two pan­els on the top­ic of male al­lies and gen­der equal­i­ty for women and girls in sport. Held every four years and build­ing on more than 30 years of glob­al im­pact, the IWG Glob­al Sum­mit is con­sid­ered the ‘Davos of Women’s Sport.’ It brings to­geth­er in­flu­en­tial lead­ers, de­ci­sion-mak­ers, and change­mak­ers to shape the fu­ture of gen­der eq­ui­ty in sport.

It was in this set­ting that Regi­na and I first spoke. Since then, we have main­tained con­tact as she strives to em­bed the cul­ture of gen­der equal­i­ty in Ugan­da and, I dare say the African con­ti­nent. It takes a lot of courage to do what she is do­ing. It al­so takes a deep well of for­ti­tude.

What she is do­ing, not on­ly for gen­der equal­i­ty but for us­ing sport as a pub­lic health plat­form to pro­mote, in par­tic­u­lar, ear­ly can­cer de­tec­tion, to raise aware­ness, and fight non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and gen­der based vi­o­lence ad­vo­ca­cy, is a note­wor­thy ex­am­ple.

At the grass­roots lev­el, sport can play an im­por­tant role in spread­ing im­por­tant mes­sages. It may not be the con­ven­tion­al or tra­di­tion­al role as many ex­pect sport to play but it makes sense.

Full cred­it to Regi­na Lun­y­olo; she is a pi­o­neer on the African con­ti­nent, male or fe­male. She has tak­en a Sports Club in­to in­no­v­a­tive ter­ri­to­ry. It’s brave. It’s dif­fer­ent.

She is an AISTS Fu­ture Fe­male Leader in Sport Schol­ar­ship hold­er study­ing for a Mas­ter of Ad­vanced Stud­ies in Sport Man­age­ment and Tech­nol­o­gy de­gree. Hers is a re­mark­able sto­ry.

Along a sim­i­lar line to Lun­y­olo’s long-stand­ing sport-with-a-pur­pose mind­set, but of a more re­cent vin­tage, is the an­nounce­ment from Queens Park Crick­et Club (QPCC). That their an­nu­al and pop­u­lar 8-a-side foot­ball tour­na­ment- cur­rent­ly un­der­way - will this year in­clude prostate can­cer aware­ness and free screen­ing. A col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween QPCC and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uro­log­i­cal So­ci­ety. QPCC pres­i­dent Jef­frey Guillen and his lead­er­ship team de­serve full marks.

QPCC, as an icon­ic club, has tak­en the lead here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. For many years, the bank­ing sec­tor has car­ried the torch with their 5Ks for a cause and pur­pose.

Fol­low­ing on from the ex­am­ple set in far-away Ugan­da, it’s good that an icon­ic Club such as QPCC has gone that way as well.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.