Transcript
[0:00] Music.
Introducing "It's an Inside Job" podcast for resilience
[0:09] Back to It's an Inside Job podcast. I'm your host, Jason Lem.
Now, this podcast is dedicated to helping you to help yourself and others to become more mentally and emotionally resilient so you can be better at bouncing back from life's inevitable setbacks.
Now, on It's an Inside Job, we decode the science and stories of resilience into practical advice, skills, and strategies that you can use to impact your life and those around you.
Now, with that said, let's slip into the stream.
[0:37] Music.
Introducing Roar and Gøril Wægger, Founders of Sports for Understanding
[0:45] Well, welcome back, folks. Welcome back to It's an Inside Job.
I'm your host, Jason Liem.
In today's episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by the dynamic duo of Roar and Gøril Wægger.
They are the founders of an organization called Sports for Understanding.
Their goal is to use sports to develop contact and understanding between young people from different parts of the world.
And considering how divided and disconnected our world seems right now, well, our world is increasingly divided on a variety of issues, from politics to religion to social values.
It seems like we can't find common ground anymore.
You know, this polarization can be seen in our news feeds, our social media interactions, and even in our everyday conversations.
It is too easy to feel hopeless in a world that seems so divided.
However, Roar and Guril, Vegard, believe that sports can play a role in bringing people together.
They are passionate about using sports to break down barriers and to build understanding.
So in today's episode, we will hear from my guests about their work with young people.
They will share their insights on how sports can promote peace and understanding.
We will also discuss the importance of education and communication, bridging the divides between people. So join me now as we explore how sports can unite us and create a better world.
And so without further ado, let's slip into the stream and find out about the amazing initiatives and efforts of sports.
[2:10] Music.
Introduction: Living in Nesalen and married to Roa
[2:25] We're living in Nesalen and married to Roa, that will introduce himself later.
I'm working as a senior partner at a software company in Oslo, but all my spare time has always been spent on family and volunteer work.
And I've always been involved in things that I'm passionate about.
And that is also what we're going to talk about today with Sports Understanding.
And my name is Roar Vegger. I'm also 55, or soon to be 55, living outside Oslo and Nesodden.
And in addition to running this organization on our spare time, I'm founder and CEO of something called Vegger Negotiation Institute, where I am passionate about conflict resolution and negotiations and mediation and helping people to build bridges.
Gorgeous and happy to say that roar has been on the show way back in season two and we are now well into season five um and i wanted to have you guys on the show is i thought your ngo uh sports for understanding was a very interesting concept considering the polarization we see across the globe when it comes to globalization when it comes to cultures religions what have the nation states and how we see this fragmentation.
Noble cause of using sports for understanding and unity
[3:51] And it's troubling to see. I know it's always been around, but it seems to be even more now than ever before.
And I thought sports for understanding, it was such a noble cause and its philosophy that I wanted to talk about it because it's such a, I think, such a great way through the act of sports to bring cultures together, to bring people together.
Maybe you could begin with describing what sports for understanding is.
[4:23] Yes, that's a good question. And it's through the purpose of what we are doing is to use sports to develop contact and understanding between young people from different parts of the world.
Our philosophy is that activity knowledge and friendships help to build this kind of understanding and break down barriers and with the polarization that you just mentioned jason we feel this is more important than when we started this kind of work 10 years ago so maybe girl you can go into to how we created or how we became involved with all this kind of work, because I think that is explaining the purpose that led to the development of Sport for Understanding.
[5:22] Yeah. And I think when, as you said, when we started this, the world was actually looking better than it does today.
[5:32] And I think what we do know is more important than ever.
And also, I think that because what we do is working with young people aged 13 to 30 or mainly 13 to 20, actually.
And I think the way the world look working with these young kids about the future of the world is more important than working with us, the old people, because I think we are the one that are breaking down the, you know, destroying the world and building up this polarization.
So, yeah, shortly about what inspired us to start Sport for Understanding is, well, I was the manager for Nesodent basketball team for nine years, many years ago.
And as a coincidence, actually, we started to working with something called Peace Players in Cyprus.
Peace Player is a peace organization that works in countries where there is conflict, such as like South Africa, Israel.
[6:40] No more than, yeah, we read too much about that, but Israel and Cyprus and Northern Ireland, where there are conflict, not, when we started this, it was not just like, what do you call, military conflict, but also political conflict.
So their goal was to mix young kids from both sides of these conflicts, to play basketball together and doing something fun together to get to know each other.
[7:06] And during that work and those few exchanges we had with Cyprus, Peace Play Cyprus, that actually led to a gap year, a family gap year for us in Cyprus in 2015 and 2016. Yeah.
[7:24] And when we moved there, our main reason for moving there was, of course, to get more involved with Peace Players Cyprus.
And during that year, we actually started an exchange program between Nazarene Basket and all Peace Players sites.
And within the next year, actually 60 kids from Palestine, Israel, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Norway, and South Africa actually had four youth exchanges together.
[7:57] So that was amazing. And after that gap year, we decided that we wanted to take this a step further because our kids then stopped playing basketball after a while. They left the Nesodden Basket.
And we decided to take this opportunity, build our own NGO, to give the same opportunity to other clubs and other sports in Norway and expand the network of athletes and youths and giving these opportunities to other clubs as well.
So that is short how NGO or how our sport of understanding was established.
Expansion of Sport for Understanding over the years
[8:39] And part of that philosophy, as you said, is activity, knowledge and friendship.
And so obviously, I mean, a lot of this is mainly sort of Norwegian teams.
And then you spoke about Israelis and Palestinians and Cyprus and such.
I mean, has it expanded over 10 years?
And obviously, you've included quite a large cohort of different groups.
[9:06] Groups yeah uh because because the the first part was then with peace players cyprus right and and then when we two years ago what is it two years ago when we established uh established sport for understanding we reach out to other countries as well so we have just had an amazing exchange for 70 people in greece together with a norwegian basketball club from bergen and with a basketball club in valencia in spain and visiting a basketball club in greece so to us it's we're welcoming everyone who wants to work with us no matter country or you know where they are from everyone is welcome that's amazing i mean i'm always curious as to sort of the the backstory the origin story of such organizations of certain philosophies i was wondering was there a pivotal moment or experience that sort of solidified your belief in the power of sports to bridge cultural divides?
[10:09] Yeah, I think it was, I'll give you the word afterwards, but I think I got the epiphany on my first youth exchange to Cyprus, where I saw how they managed to bring kids together using sport.
Or they met on the court where they were equal and they knew the sport.
So they got, you know, they got confident. Yeah.
And then using that confidence in going into workshops, working with conflict resolution, communication, collaborations, respect, you know, themes on workshop that they actually, without knowing it, also were using on the basketball court.
So when I got back from that trip, because we live on the island, so we commute with a boat.
Going back on the trip, I came home, spent the evening here and went to work the day after.
And on the boat, I sent an SMS to my wife, saying, do you want to move to Cyprus for a year and work voluntarily?
[11:15] And his response was without a second of doubt, yes, let's do that.
And then we started planning to take a gap year and bring three kids and a dog to Cyprus and establish there for a year.
And then this program was created. So, we smile when we think about what caused us to make this change for a small time, but have a great impact on the two of us and to our three kids and all the friends and colleagues that we are meeting around Europe and expanding out of Europe with the former organization Peace Players.
And now how we have created our own sport for understanding. So we have great fun.
Key activities and programs implemented by Sport for Understanding
[12:10] I was wondering, could you guys describe some of the sort of, because obviously it's not just being on the court playing basketball.
It sounds like there's so much more involved.
So I was wondering, could you describe some of the sort of key activities or programs in S4U that implements some of the goals you set out as an NGO to achieve amongst these young people?
I think you said between 13 and early 20s.
[12:34] Yeah, I'll do that. And as Gertrude said, when we bring them with sport, they come in with sport.
And the main sport we have been working with now have been basketball because that is the sport our kids have been involved with.
So we know that and we know the community best.
[12:54] The kids, the youth, they have confidence doing a sport they have done for a certain amount of time.
And using that confidence to help them be aware of what are they actually doing when they are playing this sport.
[13:13] And then we bring them out in workshops. And as Gerlitz said, it's basic communication skills.
It is about asking questions, taking different perspectives, learning to listen to each other.
How do you actually do that? And we know how difficult it is because I have all my own thoughts in my head, what I'm going to do tomorrow, my biases towards you, where you come from, because you look a little bit different than than me and then you can see they have the same interest so they have that uh commonality when they do the activity they have confidence in and then we bring them out maybe into a kind of a discomfort area it is because they can get to to learn.
They need to sit in a circle. They need to take a stand.
They do activities, but they have, we try to emphasize to have fun in these activities, but we also need to move them into an area of kind of discomfort.
And we know to learn, you need to move into a discomfort area, But you do that in a safe environment and with the confidence that they bring from the court.
[14:38] Yeah. And just to add something to that, you know, these kids are not used to small talk, right, anymore.
They don't know what that is. So when we challenge them in these workshops to actually talk to each other without their phone in between, and we actually challenge them to talk about something that they are maybe passionate about or share something that they think is interesting or hard or difficult, that's a challenge.
So one of our main goal during these youth exchanges is actually so simple it's is learn them to to actually you know be confident in small talk to talk to each other and also you know about the body language how your body language is impacting your peers it's so interesting to see how they develop through the week on these things yeah so i just had to add No, it sounds like self-awareness is a big part of this, you know, being aware of their body language, their inflections, their mannerisms, how they communicate, because obviously, I mean, we all know this, but different cultures communicate in different ways.
Building self-awareness and communication skills in participants
[15:51] Some are much more expressive, some are much more stoic.
But having this understanding, is this part of this sort of safe environment you create?
[16:02] I will definitely say that. And what has amazed us almost for every exchange is to see the change in the participants from day one when they come in, sit in the bus, traveling from the airport to the site we are going to be.
We try to mix them in the bus to sit with someone we don't know.
And you know how challenging that could be.
But that is a small step in a safe environment.
[16:32] And you meet, you stick with your friends, and then you start to see the bounding because you play the sport you love to do and you have that in common.
And then you can see the changes from when they sit in the lunchroom, they stick together, but then you try to take small steps to say, today you need to sit with someone you haven't spoken with before.
And that is baby steps but it's those baby steps is challenging in a comfortable way and then after five six days when we are going back you can see they are crying and hugging and the beauty of today is that we have social media so it's much more easy today than 30 years ago to stay in touch because they are using all kind of media to still communicate and we can see the friendships and when we were talking about this what have you experienced I remember one of the the boys that we brought with us some time ago and you said stoic yes he was definitely very very stoic.
[17:50] And on the plane back, he was standing next to his seat and he catched the eyes of a girl and me and he was smiling.
And he was from a culture where he was trained not to smile because that showed weakness.
And in four, five, six days, you can see that kind of change in one single person.
And that is amazing to experience. It's baby steps in a more peaceful world, but it's steps.
[18:25] You know, I think sports for understanding is such a great philosophy that I know there are many listeners who may be coaches, who may be parents or voluntary coaches or other youth organizations. organizations.
And they're thinking, okay, this is great. But it's the specific things you talked about.
It's creating a safe environment. It's sharing perspectives.
It's listening to each other.
[18:47] I mean, could we go a little more into detail, into the sort of nuts and bolts, how you create this environment?
I know you said baby steps, so they sort of slowly become acclimatized to each other and how they interact and such.
Creating a Safe Environment for Understanding
[19:01] But can you maybe, if we can go back and just rewind, how do you define a safe environment and can you paint myself and our listeners a picture of what a safe environment looks like at one of these uh s4u events when i explained the bus ride earlier moving into the venue we are staying um we know we all like to stick with our old friends and and those we know.
So part of it is that we are always dividing the total group into smaller groups.
And we try to use colorful t-shirts that we have team purple and team blue and red and green, et cetera.
In that group, you have your new community.
And in that community, you have a mix of boys, girls, elder, younger, and of course from every side that is part of this exchange.
[20:01] They are creating a team name. They are creating, what do we call it, a slogan, a song that is creating their own small green team community.
[20:19] That means that we have this smaller community that is mixed to start to know this group much better.
And we know the effect of in-groups and out-groups when you talk about conflict resolution.
We are not helping them to create an out-group, but we are emphasizing my own in-group.
So I have this safe environment in this group.
So when you then go to lunch, you sit with your group. And then when we do activities, then we are mixing all the different groups during the whole week.
[20:56] And in addition, we have also mentors with us.
And we would like to emphasize the important part of these mentors because they are working closely with their own green team group.
So they are helping them and achieving that part. I see a girl would like to make a comment there.
Yeah, I would like to make a comment because when we have these small groups and they are, you know, the green group is getting to know each other after the first day.
So the next day we have activities where, for example, green and purple group is together.
So every week, sorry, every day, we make sure that all the groups will be together and will get to know each other.
But they have the same, you know, they have the green group is together all the week. but we mix them together with the other ones.
So we take small baby steps in getting to know the others.
And also when the Rua talks about mentors, I think that is...
[21:57] Maybe one of the best things that we have done in our NGO is to start a mentor group, which actually is, we have so far picked teen young people from several countries in Europe that is a part of a mentor program.
And they are, most of them are previously participants on exchanges the past 10 years.
So we they are using their experience and their energy to connect with the kids on the exchanges because honestly we have to say i mean it wasn't i we are 54 years old and you know we we we don't connect in the same fun way with 13 14 15 years old kids so so so we kind of decided to to on the last exchange we had we kind of decided to you know to step back uh a little bit on site uh and we what we did was we we uh engaged we teach the mentors to run the workshops we were there obviously together with them helping them out because this is new to them as well but on the the last exchange, these amazing mentors were running the workshops, creating energy, you know, being, having the same t-shirts as their team participants, you know, giving high fives, being fun.
[23:25] The young kids look up to them also because many of them are really amazing basketball players playing on the highest level in Norway, but most of all, because they are great people.
[23:37] And doing this, we saw that we connected the energy with these mentors together with these young people and the participants.
And that was amazing. That was really amazing.
Mentors: Connecting Energy and Building Relationships
[23:49] So how many, so if we looked at sort of the ratio, so how many, I guess, participants are there and how many mentors?
Is it one mentor per team? Is it one mentor per country? One mentor per group?
Yeah. I mean, it's different. different depending on what we apply for and and what we decide but on the on the exchange that we are going on having now we are in total 74 people and and it's a high number and 53 of them are participants in the age 13 to 15 and then in addition we have with us on this exchange 12 12 mentors and then from you know most i think eight of them is from sport for understanding in norway and then we have two mentors for every country joining us so two mentors from spain and two from greece and then we have coaches like adults uh always uh adults coaches that are responsible for you know everything that happens uh with the group so in total on this exchange change that we had in greece and that will take place in bergen in march we are 73 people.
Encouraging Perspective Sharing and Language Learning
[25:03] That's really interesting to hear so if we come back as as you said part of it is not just the sports but it's the sharing of knowledge and the sharing through activities and you and i i think this goes across the board for all human beings but when it comes to sharing perspectives and and listening to others, maybe could you be more specific as how do you encourage this?
I guess English is the common language amongst all these groups, and some people will be more fluent than others.
[25:32] Yeah, and that's interesting, Jason, because language is quite often a barrier.
And honestly, Norwegians are usually very good in English. That's our experience when we travel abroad.
But like on the last exchange, we had quite a few kids actually, especially from Spain, that was not that confident in English.
So that is why we try to do i said it we try to have fun we try to play so using fun and play to learn uh and body language you know it's so interesting to teach these kids where language could be a barrier that you know your body language can actually be a kind of language um and definitely definitely yeah and you know when when we asked the kids uh after the last trip what was what they have learned a lot of them said that body language actually has an impact so so when we do these run these workshops we try to use simple communication speak slowly and we try to say that you know the peers in your group that are good in english try to translate to your teammates.
And that's also learning, you know, that I actually have to give my attention to someone else and help someone else to understand what we are actually doing.
[26:59] So it's a philosophy of all teams, right? Even then, when they're helping, right, sometimes the more skilled will help the less skilled to develop their own, their to become more adept at whatever it is they're practicing.
And that may be language too, or engaging.
[27:15] And we see the awareness of the body language that many of them have never thought about.
So one thing is that we are using specifically being aware of your body language.
You use that, communicate, I want to tell you this.
I'm not able to explain it in a foreign language, but I'm using my body to explain it.
Then we move on to see you learn about the awareness of my own body language and how you are perceiving me when when i do this and that and that is vice versa i also interpret you with your body language and then you bring this into or on the court where they are playing and what are they doing during a game they're using body language all the time to communicate Communicate, I'm free, I want a ball, I'm here, I'm there, I would like you to do so.
So the connection between the workshops, the everyday communication between the teams and the different participants into what they know from before and they are passionate about, it's suddenly, wow.
Wow it's so many wow effects uh during a week like this when you go into and they realize actually my behavior i haven't said a word but you are you know explaining so and so and interpreting so and so so it's amazing to see.
[28:44] Music.
Challenges of working with difficult and disrespectful youth
[28:55] I just have to add because it might sound like everything goes like you know without any trouble and it's smooth and it's nice but I must say sometimes you know you feel like, They don't understand that some kids behave really bad, you know, sometimes they are rude.
They don't respect others. They don't respect you or the mentors when they are talking in the workshop.
[29:22] So this is hard work. I feel sometimes like we are raising kids.
[29:28] That there is some lack of parenting sometimes.
Sometimes but at the same time when we on the last day we always have reflection and self-awareness you know discussions of the learning outcome of the week you know and that is when we realize why we do this because during the week sometimes we don't feel that you know they are they are not listening they are not learning they they we you know sometimes you get so frustrated but at the the end they actually tell us what they have learned and what an impact we have done because even though we don't always feel throughout the week that they understand or they respect or they do what we want them to do the impact is there the impact is so big yeah actually i wanted to segue into you know it's it's such a noble cause with a strong philosophy but of course there's going to be complications when you're talking about youths and especially when you're mixing cultures I mean to say there isn't then obviously we're skipping over something and that's what I kind of wanted to segue but you naturally went into that I wanted to challenge the both of you as to you know what are some of the hard hard challenges sometimes the things that some of the nuts you just can't crack or the codes you can't crack I mean how do you I mean obviously each time you do this.
[30:57] It's a lesson learned for yourselves and the other adults as to how to adapt or how to evolve the next gathering.
I was wondering, what are some of the hard lessons that you've learned as an organization working with youths across different cultures?
[31:15] I would like to start to say planning, planning, planning.
Preparation is always important. And preparation in the way of we have an understanding of the purpose and philosophy.
Philosophy our main task and for every time we are doing this is to be, more firm about the purpose of all this what is we are not running a basketball camp because girl i never played basketball we have kids that play this so when we are working with organizations we need to emphasize this is not a normal basketball camp that you go to just learn skills we are here to teach you human skills and we are using basketball or many other sports that could be in the future as a tool to learn you the human skills that you could bring with you off court in different places so i would like to say preparation in that sense of understanding Understanding the philosophy at a purpose is a core part.
Yeah. And back to your question then, what has been the hardest lesson?
You know, that is exactly what the word is saying, because we have had exchanges where the mutual expectations...
[32:43] Were not there neither for the the partner or the the participants right because they were expecting a basketball camp and they thought you know they started by when we started to do the workshops we saw that these young people were like oh what is this i mean hey i've never done this you know so we managed it ended up being great because we saw that that was a challenge the the first day so we managed to have an evaluation meeting and we managed to set the expectations together with the kids the second day so it ended good but i think that that is the hardest lesson uh so so we have to make sure that we have a mutual understanding uh that we are all being a part of the preparations with the partners and with with the kids and and the mentors so that but they know what they're going to.
And I think that is common in everything we do, I think, you know, to prep, preparation and expectations.
[33:48] It's important. It sounds like the foundation of everything you're saying, you know, is to clearly define the expectations for everyone, the adults, the youth, the mentors, what is expected and what you're trying to achieve.
And I guess it's to repeat that, as you said, prep, prep, prep, prep to repeat that message to make sure it gets it's it lands with people is that what i understand you're saying that's the foundation to make sure most of this works as well as it can yeah definitely it's it's it's crucial and and uh and the thing is as you said uh jason um it's all about developing from exchange to exchange and program to program and and we have one really important important thing that we never skip during the exchanges, and that is the evaluation meeting, both with the participants every day.
[34:41] And also we have a mentor and coach meeting every afternoon to go through the day and discuss, you know, what has been successful.
Is there anything we have to change? Is there any challenges between the kids?
Is there something we should be aware of within the groups?
Groups and that is what i think is making us developing every every day and between every exchange no i think that's a brilliant methodology when you can have um when you have these debriefs where you can have situational awareness where you talk about what went well what could have been improved what do we need more of less of what could have been changed or eliminated we sometimes need to recreate the program we need to change topics we need to say we are cannot able to do that and as an example what we had to do in greece during our last exchange we saw that okay let's have the mentors to have an afternoon evening off what we did we took all the teams when they had a kind of a spare time and we have a great main mentor with us that lived in earlier now living back in cyprus and he is excellent in creating games what we did we created.
[36:07] Games for 60 to 90 minutes where the different teams have to do fun games and you know it's kind of a fun competition games where you have to do different different things blow up balloons balloons and sit on them to the today you know a break a pop and running back and forth and doing that it's fun but not kids fun it's also fun for for us to be to be part and helping out and you see laughter and that is kind of a stop point and you can suddenly see a completely different different change in the environment where we have earlier maybe we have seen a kind of a suspicious we have some that didn't really get involved a communication barrier could be part of that reason so what did happen yes i i started thinking you probably do not like me or you probably do not think i'm good in what i'm doing and then stop we need to do something what should we do?
And having a well-prepared plan, but also able to do these reflections, and to change and improvise is an important part to have the whole group involved in the activities.
[37:36] In preparation and during, to be able to do these kind of necessary changes.
I'm sorry, please go to... No, no, I just want to, I think flexibility, plan, plan, plan, but in addition, having the flexibility makes the perfect result.
And I think, you know, sports for understanding, as for you, it's just that it, I mean, when you consider the amount of the dynamics and the complexities of cultures and youths and what have you in play, You need to have an organization that can pivot.
And I think what you were talking about, Guta, before is when you have these sort of sit-downs at the end, these debriefs, these evaluations each day, this allows you to pivot and adapt.
And I think that's why organizations or NGOs like yours are so resilient and can be used across the spectrum of cultures and nations to bring youths together.
And I think it's just that. And it's also to admit there are hard points.
There are hard lessons to take on, but how do we use it? How do we implement?
How do we adapt and pivot for the next time or the next day or the next event?
And I think that's what creates a sense of robustness in such a way.
[38:49] I'd like just to shift the conversation. I'd like to learn a little more about
Impact of NGO involvement on global understanding and peace building
[38:54] the motivation, how it has shaped you.
This is a question for both of you, of course. How has your involvement in this NGO, as for you, sort of impacted your perspective on global understanding and peace building?
For me, it's part of the work I'm doing in my main job as a negotiation advisor and trainer in my own company.
And the purpose behind that is, for me, I was inspired.
Back in 2012, our now Prime Minister, Jonas Galsstøre, had a talk, We Must Talk. He had a TED Talk named We Must Talk.
[39:41] And when we have been traveling, we have been to Jerusalem. We have seen the wall between the Palestinian areas and Jewish areas.
We have been to Northern Ireland. They made peace in 1989.
And they still have so-called peace walls between Protestant and Catholic areas. areas.
We have established and we found in love with Cyprus, so we are having a boat at home there, and we see still the green line we need to pass with our passports every day we cross, the border between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot areas.
They have all these places walls.
And what we see is that when we have walls between people, and that could be countries or areas in the country.
It could be invisible walls. But all this is creating the mistrust.
It's creating the misunderstandings.
And what is encouraging, motivating.
[40:49] If I talk for myself now and go on later, it is to see people connecting, people getting to know each other, people starting to respect each other and this is what i know is micro steps in a better world but i think all of us in different senses need to walk these micro steps to try to have a different awareness and a different perspective of others and in that way learn to respect them i don't need to agree with them.
I don't need to like what they are doing and how they do it, but I can respect them and I can understand them.
And that for me is part of what I feel is my motivation to be working in this area. Yeah.
[41:45] And I think my motivation started in another way because I said when I introduced myself that I've always been passionate about things and the society.
Inspiring youth through basketball and cultural exchanges
[42:01] And when my kids started playing, or our kids started playing basketball, I wanted to be a part of their world.
So I jumped in and became the manager of the basketball club.
I was that for nine years. And it was a great way for me to connect with their teammates and interest in the community around us.
And after doing these exchanges that we have done for the 10 years, and I feel like my kids, our kids, they are now 25, 21 and 18.
I want to give the same opportunity to all other kids because what they have been a part of, Not just visiting all the countries, but meeting these people, building friendship across borders, learning tolerance, learning, you know, understanding, learning other cultures, seeing the people behind the religion and the culture and where they are from.
I think they have become great people uh and obviously i'm um i'm not objective maybe.
[43:11] But i think they have become including open social people because of what they have been a part of And for me as a mother, I want really all the kids in the world to be able to learn these things.
And I think that is a small step towards a less polarized world than we see today.
And this is really, I get emotional when I talk about this because I think we can actually do an impact.
Well, evidently you do make an impact and that's what you see.
It sounds like you just want to create this a hundred or a thousand fold or a million fold where it has a global impact on the youth around whatever nation or whatever country. That's what I hear.
Yeah. I think we need to get these kids that are of the future to be connected and see the people, see the person behind the name and behind where you live.
I think it's crucial for the future of the world, I think.
[44:24] And when you say this, I got to think about a quote that I saw a while ago back from Nelson Mandela.
When he became the new president of South Africa, and maybe some of you listeners have seen the movie about the rugby and how he created the South African rugby team that was a pure white team at that time.
And he connected the teams and created sport.
The quote is, sport has the power to change the world.
And he used that to create for the whole country of South Africa to support their rugby team because they represented the whole country.
[45:13] That brings us maybe in a different sense in this conversation, but I want to mention a new development that we have been able to be part of Sports for Understanding, a collaboration with the Norwegian Basketball Federation and a sports club in Germany called Ulm.
We have created a program that we have called Believe and Enjoy program.
If you are creating tomorrow's coaches, and they are today very skilled coaches in their basketball, in their skills in basketball, the program is to develop their human skills.
So, have coaches becoming aware of their human skills in their communication, in their empathy to the players, and creating then a culture in their sport where they emphasize not only the pure sport skills, but also the importance of the human skills.
Or soft skills, whatever we would like to name them, in their work as coaches.
[46:37] So that is a new development into all this that was inspired, among other things, by the words of Nelson Mandela, that sport has the power to change the world.
[46:50] And just to add to comments on that, I mean, they say that in addition to parents, teachers and coaches have the most impact on kids.
And that is why we're working on this project, education and developing coaches that are actually working as youth workers.
Right so so we we want to make sure that they have the right skills to work with all these amazing kids that are doing sport you know they have a huge impact i think it's very important what you're saying because you know whether it's coaches teachers parents or leaders i mean all of these have a sense of authority they have a sense of respect and you know people they're they're responsible for the development of other people and i think what we call these soft skills such as communication or conflict resolution empathy they're actually hard skills because Because I personally believe you need to be self-aware.
You need to be self-aware. You need to be aware of other people and how they're reacting. As you said before, it's about listening.
It's about questioning. Questioning in the right way. It's about supporting.
And coaching in the sense of sometimes taking on the philosophy of asking and not telling.
Always telling people what to do. But asking them how they think they can come to inclusion.
Asking them how they perceive things. And it comes down to what I understand for the youth or adults, you know, we need to feel respected, understood, and heard. And if you get those three elements.
[48:19] In place, like what you guys are talking about, then I think you're setting the foundation because sometimes I think we overcomplicate these dynamics.
And sometimes I always believe in my philosophy is if you get the foundation of human relations down in place, again, respect, understanding, and felt listened to, then everything else kind of falls into place.
I'm not saying it's easy, far from it. That's why I think they're hard skills to learn.
But if you can get that, but if you can establish that at an early age, I mean, I've been talking to, obviously, Rohr and other mediators and conflict resolutions, hostage negotiations on the show.
[48:59] And this is maybe a little sidestep, but I think if you can teach these skills like you do at Sports for Understanding at an early age, well, I think it's like language.
If you learn language, you can learn multiple languages at a very early age and become quite adept and fluent.
And it just becomes part of your mental or psychological makeup, right?
And I think all these skills and all these, when it comes to awareness or these soft skills, as you've talked about it, I think for me, they become adept. They become skilled.
They become fluent in the ability to relate to others, to understand perspectives.
They don't always have to agree no but they can agree with you know um without being disagreeable maybe that's the best way of putting it yeah yeah i love what you're saying it's a good sum up actually i was wondering sort of looking looking ahead looking for what are some of the aspirations or goals does s4 you have in terms of expanding its reach or its impact on fostering more sort or global understanding amongst youth?
[50:06] Well, that's a good question, Jason.
Obviously, this is also about money, right?
Because we are doing this purely voluntarily, and we do it on the free time, because we both are working full time.
And the reason we managed to do this is because we have support from Erasmus+.
[50:26] And Erasmus Plus is a part of the Peace and Reconciliation Programme for EU.
And by applying for money to our programmes and getting that from them, we are able to do what we do without the cost for anyone.
Right. So the first step is to continue writing good applications and continue to be relevant for Erasmus Plus programmes, which we so far are.
I think we have got a lot of money from them, and they are really helping us to be able to go through with what we believe in.
[51:07] So you can imagine, Erasmus+, in 2022, they had 3 billion euro to use on these kinds of activities.
And we were one out of 71,000 organizations that are prioritized and are getting funded from Erasmus+. So that is something we need to continue doing. It's a lot of work.
Writing application reports, you know, it's like 80 pages.
But we have to continue being good at that. And we have to continue being relevant for Erasmus+.
[51:41] And then obviously, I must say, a goal is, if I look five or 10 years ahead in the future, I would love to be able to work more with sport by understanding.
Um right so uh so that we could spend more time doing more of what we do now but that is not an option as long as both of us has a hundred percent percent like full full jobs on the sideline but maybe in 10 years we are able to work a little less and could give more organization as the the possibility to join well i guess with anything it's you know as for you is an investment And when you invest the time, the effort and the actions and the cognitive energy, there are the dividends and the dividends are the youth who pay off from this and then what they carry on to when they become adults.
And hopefully, you know, it sort of has a ripple effect outwards.
The Ripple Effect: Importance of Peace and Reconciliation
[52:44] And the ripple effect, I think that is, as we have said earlier in this show, more important than ever.
[52:52] You mentioned that EU, they have set aside 3.9 billion euro in 2022 to this peace and reconciliation program.
We know it from many places where students have an exchange.
They go for an Erasmus exchange.
That is part of this program. And it's based on the same philosophy.
I got to know you by going a different place, living there for a certain amount of time, and being involved in the local community.
And we are connecting people.
[53:25] Our part with exchanges through sport and youth workers, as we just mentioned, is another part of it.
And we would like to encourage many other organizations to become aware of what Active Youth and Erasmus Plus are offering us, because I think we all need to do more in that sense.
And when we see back 2013, Europe is in a different place today than when we started this work 10 years ago.
And when I said different, I think it's in a worse place than it was 10 years ago.
And if this continues, and when we see world leaders that are mocking other people and uses racism in their way of becoming elected into their position.
[54:27] It is important that we continue to work with the everyday single person down there on the ground level to have them to know each other.
Help them to build confidence because they have that from the sport they are doing and adding on new knowledge, new awareness and creating those, as you mentioned, hardcore soft skills.
[54:57] I was wondering as we come close to the top of our conversation close to the top of the hour was there any other things you would like to share with our listeners about sports for understanding or anything associated with it i think we have talked about what is important for us uh but but i think maybe the most important at the end is to to.
Grassroots Level Changes and Encouraging Engagement in Youth Sports
[55:24] To encourage other organizations or sports clubs you know to to dig into the opportunity that is there because we need more sport for understandings we need more people that engage in the youth and that helps out with these really really important things that that we do like developing and young, people so i encourage others to do the same because we need organizations like sports understanding, I think a lot of the changes do happen at the grassroot levels, not always the big organization.
It's just touching base with the locals. And then hopefully it has a sort of a positive influence moving out.
As we said, the ripple effect. if corporations want to to donate want to help support your organization or if other coaches or other communities out there find this fascinating how can they reach out to the two of you what's the best way they can take make contact with you well we have um uh we have our our homepage.
[56:32] Supportforunderstanding.com, where there is a phone number and email, and we would love to be reached out to by companies who want to engage in several ways, actually.
Of course, support by money, but also supported with knowledge, competence, insights to give us, who wants to cooperate with us.
We are looking for people that are or companies or organizations that are are have the same interest in in in in.
[57:08] But they're contributing to the world. And we see many companies, they have today a main office in one country and have several people coming in to work here in our main office or we have other offices in different countries.
This is cultural awareness.
This is cultural differences. We need to know each other. We are a team.
We're going to work together in all this. And that same philosophy is the same for them as it is for us, connected friendship between different people, different places, different countries, different cultures in Europe.
[57:49] So we encourage youths to travel, to be curious about new people.
Why do they do it the way they do it?
Uh try to understand more than being suspicious lean in be be curious what is their perspective why are they doing that and we just briefly mentioned here some of the the quotes that came from some of the exchanges and one of the experiences was that we were as girl mentioned mentioned we are reflecting at the end and we have a total evaluation and and some of the wows that came out in one exchange was wow our problems in norway are minor problems they mentioned we have so we you know the roads are not always that good and then a palestinian is is saying yeah i'm afraid i'm being shot on the way home from a friend it gives perspectives and that That gives perspectives.
And when you have a friend sitting next to you that is sharing that kind of experience.
Reflecting on the Impact of International Work
[59:02] It's starting to reflect, how is it really back home? What kind of problems do I really have?
Are they are they should i mention it and of course you mention it from the perspective you have but then when you need uh or you start to learn from other perspectives you suddenly can see that yeah this is big for me but is it really big uh and and and you see those changes and that creates awareness and that creates another quote and from a participant's album to work with international work when i grow up um this gave me so much confidence in myself and then we can smile on the way back and see wow you know it's meaningful what we are doing and it's fun and it has an impact well guril roar i just want to commend you on your on all the initiatives and and starting such a great organization such as Sports for Understanding.
[1:00:06] And evidently, you'll never know the true impact you've probably had, like most things, but that doesn't matter.
I think what matters is that you are making a positive impact.
And considering how the world is right now, it's a small movement, but at least it is movement. It's a grassroots.
And so I will make sure to leave all the contact information information if people want to get in touch with you, if they have questions, if they have reasons, if they wish to donate or support with knowledge or money or what have you, I'll keep that all in the show notes.
But I thank you very much for your time and sharing this great organization, because I think it'll trigger a lot of thinking out there, a lot of reflection.
Thank you so much, Jason. Thank you so much for having us on your podcast.
[1:00:58] Music.
Sports for Understanding: Fostering Unity and Empathy
[1:01:08] Well, folks, that was the dynamic duo of Roar and Coral Vega, a sports for understanding, an organization that's using sports to foster understanding and cooperation among young people from different backgrounds.
You know, through a mix of sports and activities, education and dialogue, sports for understanding is creating a platform for young people to build new insights, understanding and friendships.
Sports for understanding is workshops and it's youth exchanges centered around common sports activities and are providing effective tools in bridging cultural divides and fostering empathy amongst young people.
Now, as Roar and Gorill mentioned, these young participants are becoming ambassadors for understanding and tolerance, carrying the message of peaceful coexistence into their communities and beyond.
You know, as I said at the top of this episode, in a world that is increasingly divided by differences, organizations such as Sports for Understanding, its efforts shine a beacon of what is possible, demonstrating how sports can be a powerful force for unity and understanding.
Their work with young people is laying the foundation for a more peaceful and harmonious future.
[1:02:14] One where we can celebrate our diversity without fear or conflict.
So thank you for joining me on this journey of understanding through sports.
So if any part of this conversation has intrigued your curiosity, your interest, your imagination, well, I will leave all the contact information in the show notes.
I just want to thank you, Gurel and Rohr, for your time and your generosity to share about your NGO, Sports for Understanding.
I think it's a brilliant initiative to encourage social interactions, understanding and sharing of perspectives, conflict resolution, empathy, and definitely resilience, equanimity and well-being. Thanks again.
I really appreciate your time, guys. And well, folks, that brings us to an end of another episode.
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Keep well. Keep healthy.