Using Sports and Charity to Change the World
Sport is a great way to raise money and awareness about various issues plaguing the world today. A lot of money is raised for charity by sports teams and individual athletes all over the world. One of the biggest charities that is attached to a very famous cyclist is LiveStrong. This charity, founded by Lance Armstrong, has helped raise millions of dollars to help fight cancer. The unique aspect of sport is the fact that because so many people enjoy sports, it is a great medium to get a worthwhile message across to a large audience. In the years to come, we will continue to see large sums of money raised for noble causes all around the world by various sports organisations.
There are various sports related charities around the world but a few really stand out. The first is called ‘United Through Sports’, which is a charity that focuses on using the power of sports to help develop disadvantaged communities in South Africa’s poorest regions. The charity unites people through sport by using some of the positive aspects such as fair play, friendship, community, fitness and teamwork. As the concepts of sport are universal, the help the charity provides is also universal and can be implemented in any underprivileged community in the world. By bringing volunteers from overseas together with those from the poorest communities in South Africa, the charity promotes the improvement of health, education and wellbeing.
Another great charity that was started by a group of professional athletes is called Sparks. This noble venture helps to provide children and newborn babies with the best possible start at life. It helps to fund disease prevention schemes, helps children being born and growing up in the poorest and most underprivileged regions in the world, and also helps fund research into disability prevention and rehabilitation. The charity was started by a group of athletes primarily because they were grateful for their great health and they wanted other people, especially children, around the world to get a good start to being healthy themselves. The motivation and purpose behind this charity is a very noble one, because by giving children a healthy start to life, they then can pursue everything else they want to do in their lives.
A very interesting charity that has been set up in the UK is called ‘Sports Relief’, which helps to raise money for causes all around the world. The difference in this charity is that it brings together some very famous faces from the world of entertainment and popular culture and they perform sports feats to raise money for the charity. Many famous stars have done some incredible things to raise money; David Walliams swam across the English Channel and Eddie Izzard ran a marathon a day around the UK. This charity has become a UK wide event which has managed to raise over 40 million pounds for various worthwhile causes around the world.
One of the biggest charities to be attached to sports is the LiveStrong charity founded by Lance Armstrong. The famous cyclist is a cancer survivor who has won the Tour De France a record seven times. After being diagnosed with testicular cancer which spread to his brain and lungs, his initial prognosis was poor, but he managed to survive and now has dedicated his life to raising money to fund a cure for cancer and to help other cancer survivors as well as people living with the disease. Cancer is one of the most deadly diseases in the world, and LiveStrong is doing everything in its power to defeat it. LiveStrong is about people living their lives to the fullest and being healthy and happy with themselves. They have a wide community of members who help each other get over disease, push each other, motivate one another and contribute by writing articles and offering advice.
One of the most interesting things about the charity is the fact that it started a worldwide phenomenon with little inexpensive yellow bracelets. Each bracelet cost $1 and they have sold millions of them around the world. These little pieces of cheap jewellery became a statement of doing something good in the world. Recently, the charity was able to raise $1.25 million for cancer research through the sale of bicycles ridden by Lance Armstrong that were each exclusively designed by a different artist. One of the bikes designed by artist Damien Hirst was sold for a record price of $500,000, and it became the most expensive bicycle in the world in the process.
It is a very encouraging sign that so many charities are being linked with sports to give them a boost and reach a wider audience along the way. As time goes by, we will see more of these noble initiatives being undertaken by great people willing to do something to help those that are less fortunate than themselves. Sports, it seems, can be a great catalyst for making the world a better place through charity.
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