Who: Geoffery Whitfield, a former Baptist minister, and David Bedford, Director of the London Marathon, founded Football 4 Peace in 2001. In that year, the group gathered six volunteer coaches from the University of Brighton to work with 100 Arab Muslim and Arab Christian children in the town of I'billin, Israel.
What: Coaches, community leaders and other volunteers seek to reconcile fractured communities through football and other sport activities. The organization sees sport as a way to increase contact among segregated parts of a community, while promoting increased understanding and a greater desire among participants to work towards peaceful coexistence.
Where: Following the success of its 2001 effort, F4P has expanded to work in 24 mixed communities in Israel, Palestine, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, serving 2,500 children in 2009.
Why it works: The program is predicated on neutrality, inclusion and respect, such that the transcendent power of sport is unencumbered by the kind of sociopolitical considerations that have divided the groups heretofore. By using sport as a means to reintroduce responsible dialogue and cooperative interactions among children of different factions, F4P is able to achieve maximum results.
How to help: You can sponsor anything from a coach to a training camp to an entire program OR you can volunteer, F4P is currently recruiting volunteers for its 2010 coaching team as part of its Israel programme.
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