The FISU Student Ambassador programme continues, and participants are now progressing with their individual action plans. These plans, confirmed with their respective national university sports federations (NUSF), are intended to support, and grow university sport in their country or region. Here we will introduce the plans of four participants to demonstrate the ultimate benefit of the FISU Student Ambassadors programme.
Australian FISU Student Ambassador Alex Chua has developed two plans to nurture an inclusive sporting culture within Curtin University, in Bentley, Perth, Western Australia. Enhancing the quality and engagement of students in the UniSport Nationals Representative Sport Program and other representative sporting opportunities. To date, a pilot program has been launched related to the University Basketball League training and development program to invite those interested to train as part of the representative team. Her second objective, also related to engaging students, is to develop a social sport event focused on the mature aged student cohort. The aim is to bring awareness to the impact and benefit of participating in university sport.
Lara Chehayeb, FISU Student Ambassador for Lebanon, is equally focusing on sports equity. Her aim is to support women and refugees as disadvantaged groups that don’t always have access to sport. Her first plan aims to understand and develop plans for high school girls’ involvement in physical education and varsity immersion. To build knowledge, a survey has been sent to 2,000 Lebanese schools and universities. With the results, she plans to conduct presentations in schools across the country to raise awareness for the challenges and to commence plans to alleviate them. Additionally, and to support the many refugees that are hosted in Lebanon, a friendly football game between varsity players and refugees will be played. Building relationships, highlighting the challenges refugees face, and decreasing the marginalization of refugees are all aims of this objective, demonstrating the ability of sport to breakdown barriers.
Seeking to create an environment to support student athletes and healthy lifestyles is the main focus of the work being done by Türkiye FISU Student Ambassador Çağatay Aydın. His first objective is to be done in April and May in organizing the ANGORA Tournament that will bring student athletes together to provide them opportunities in both their sports and academic careers. Universities that will have students take part have already been informed so planning is well underway. His second proposal centres around the adoption of the FISU Healthy Campus programme at I.D. Bilkent University in Ankara. As they continue to work through implementation on campus, their attention will centre around the creation of better opportunities for students in all aspects of healthy living. This will be further enhanced on campus through feedback from students and administrators.
Zambian FISU Student Ambassadors Mirriam Inutu Libati and Innocent Kanyala are identifying ways to encourage female participation and leadership in physical activity through their Let’s Get Fit campaign, which has the motto of “a healthy life and mind for a better tomorrow”.In part this has been done by community aerobics events that have already engaged many people in active living. The aim is to create broader networks across the country for such events to occur and ideas to be shared now and for future generations. This, in part, will be done through working with potential sponsors and leveraging social media platforms to engage more people to become involved. Ideally, by the end of this FISU Student Ambassador term, 90% of these platforms will be implement at all universities in Zambia. With this in place, future plans include doing similar work in primary and secondary schools.
