Chile: from small things, one day big things come
In Chile, when sport makes neighbourhoods better places to live in
Among his hundreds of songs, Bruce Springsteen wrote one that aptly describes a Deporte para todos 2022 -- Sport for All Project – in Chile:
From small things, one day big things come.
In the streets, barrios and communes of this South American nation, the population skews young. In the capital of Santiago, for instance, in the commune of Cerra Navia, Spanish for Navia Hill, 21 per cent of the people there, are aged between 8 and 16. Squeezed into 11 square kilometres on the city’s north western side: nearly 150,000 people.
This is a capital that is due in October and November 2023 to play host to the Pan-American Games. In the communes, yes, resources may sometimes be scarce. But as Francisca Gallardo, Executive Director of the Sports Corporation of Cerro Navia put it, sport and physical activity are a “fundamental tool,” one endorsed in its “priorities for the corporation and the municipality”.
This is why the Chilean Olympic Committee (COCH) launched a programme in cooperation with three community institutions – the Sports Corporation of Cerro Navia, the Shogai Judo Club of the commune of Nuñoa in north-eastern Santiago and the Ganémosle a la Calle foundation.
It is one of the 138 NOC initiatives supported worldwide by the Olympic Solidarity Values programme in 2022. All these initiatives have at their core that sport can help build a better world with this “fundamental tool” offering physical, mental and emotional benefits, including education, team-building and social inclusion.
In Cerro Navia, any number of risk factors threaten to pull young people into delinquencies or worse. Logically, then, for those in the three institutions – sport offered a known constructive way away.
The foundation’s eight sports centres run daily workshops in basketball, football, dance and more for roughly 1,000 young people. Across the board, there was active involvement in championships in what the foundation calls its Shalom League – “shalom” is the Hebrew word for “peace.” Girls’ basketball? Participation levels up 30 per cent.
In basketball in particular, centre coordinator Ignacio Bellolio said, “it has allowed us to grow with higher standards, to keep the team motivated since they see possibilities of high-level improvement,” which, he added, “they ask us for daily.”
The judo club was only one year old. Now it boasts 45 students between 4 and 15, 30 of them actively doing judo, and another 30 signed up who are 15 and older, 20 of those actively doing judo. In all, enrolment was up in 2022 by 15 per cent. The Chilean Olympic Committee’s contribution grew the training space to 10 tatami mats, and Gloria Folchi, the club’s vice president, said they were “very grateful and excited.”
In Cerro Navia, the offerings range from table tennis to wrestling to badminton to beach volleyball. Table tennis? Some 30 players. Wrestling? The “enthusiasm and participation have been constant and with a high call,” Gallardo said.
In all, across the three institutions, the COCH says, the initiative figures in 2022 to have reached 2,380 young people.
In the near term, the plan is to expand to 6,000, into the centre and south of the country.
Then, by 2030, be nationwide, with links and alliances across 15 sub-offices that can work with at least 20,000 children and young people.
Gallardo once more, reflecting on the 2022 launch of the initiative: “We believe that is essential to be able to build this alliance with the COCH and the IOC, since it allowed us to continue advancing in this path of installation of sports culture in our commune.”