Creating a Social Change

With four more entries due in less than a week, I was searching the web for some interesting topics for my blogs.. Then, this week in CP24 news I happened to hear about an organization named “Right to Play”. The name of the charity caught my attention in the first place. I felt that the name sounded a bit similar to my blog’s title “Eat to Live”. Frankly speaking when I read the headline in the news which said Olympian Clara Hughes promotes kids' 'Right to Play' it took me some time to realize that it was a charity based organization.

U can read the full article in the link below

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100323/100323_hughes/20100323/?hub=CP24Sports

Anyways I was not sure whether to still continue with the Olympian effect in this blog, as I already had my previous blog on Vancouver Olympics. However, when I read the article in CP 24 news I came to know that this organization brings sports and equipment to children, in disadvantaged areas of the world. Moreover I was also impressed with the fact that Olympian Clara Hughes is involved with this organization. It was nice to see athletes supporting such organizations by lending a helping hand to underprivileged children in some parts of the world. Also I felt fortunate enough to be in a country like Canada, which promotes physical activity among children in developing countries.

From their website, I came to know that a team of top athletes from more than 40 countries are involved with this organization. As role models, these athletes inspire children and raise awareness about the Right to play internationally. Every week more than 688,000 children take part in the regular sport and play activities and a combined total of more than 1 million children attend regular programming and special sports events/festivals. And guess what? The best part is they create social change in communities which are affected by poverty and disease. Focusing on the notion of health promotion, Right to Play’s sport and play programs educate and mobilize communities around national health and disease prevention priorities including HIV, AIDS, malaria and immunization. Their ultimate programming goal is to encourage behaviour change among children. In my opinion, I definitely feel that Right to Play is doing a good job by including both Olympic athletes and other elite sports figure as their Athlete Ambassadors in their mission. This takes me back to the one of the theories related to health behaviour which I learnt in one of my classes. According to the Social Cognitive Theory proposed by Bandura, children learn human behaviour by observing and imitating others. It is nice to see how these athletes are influencing kids to engage in physical activity and in turn responsible for a change in their behaviour. To learn more about the organization, you can follow the link below

http://www.righttoplay.com/canada/about-us/Pages/AtAGlance.aspx

I happened to read a similar blog titled Local Olympian inspires Kids. In her blog, Kristie mentions how promoting health among children at a young age will allow them to adopt a healthy lifestyle and will reduce their chances of developing diseases later in life. I fully agree with Kristie as I feel that children need to be targeted at the early stages of their life as it will help create a long lasting impact on their health.

To read Kristie’s blog follow this link http://sweetheavens2010.blogspot.com/2010/03/local-olympian-inspires-kids.html

In our lecture class on Wednesday, we got an opportunity to see a short fifteen minute lecture by Malcolm Gladwell, journalist and the author of the famous book “The Tipping Point”. In his speech, he talked about social change and how it can best be achieved. According to Gladwell, we tend to favour awareness a lot. By this he means that we have done more about knowing the issue than addressing it. He feels that there is an enormous gap between knowing and doing. Gladwell feels that to achieve social change one ought to have a plan of action and the awareness side of things then needs to follow. In my opinion, “Right to Play” is successful in best achieving this social change. Rather than focusing on the awareness side of the issue, they focus on the taking the necessary action to culminate the problem at the grassroots level.

[I tried posting the link to Gladwell’s speech, for some reason I am unable to do so. However it is posted in the Bb in the course materials section for this week.]


As I was listening to Gladwell’s speech it appeared to be that the model he proposed for social change was not as easy to achieve as it sounded. But after coming across the organization “Right to Play” I honestly feel that there is nothing impossible in this world. I feel that “Right to Play” is a best example for how one must approach social change.