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The International Language of Sports

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UConn Today, November 6, 2014
By: David Bauman

Connecticut is 12,500 miles from South Africa. But shooting hoops with fifth-graders at the Clark Elementary & Middle School gym in Hartford recently, Sikhulu Zondo was suddenly aware that playing with the American students had erased the age and cultural barriers between them.

“I’m so glad to be here,” said the Cape Town middle school teacher. Sweeping her arm in a gesture encompassing all the players – which included 10 UConn students – she added: “When I get back home, I’m going to start a program like Husky Sport.”

Developed by UConn’s Global Training and Development Institute, the two-way exchange provided the African participants – chosen by the University of Western Cape through a merit-based, competitive process – the chance to interact with Americans and experience American society, culture, and values firsthand.

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Helping African Students Become Agents of Social Change

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UConn Today, July 18, 2014
By: David Bauman

SUSI ProgramPrinting books in Braille for the blind in Algeria, training rural women to sell handicrafts in Tunisia, finding jobs for disabled people in the Ivory Coast, recycling bottles in Senegal: they’re pressing issues in Africa with one thing in common. Students developed solutions for them at UConn.

As a group of 40 college student leaders from North and Sub-Saharan Africa end a four-week stay on the Storrs campus designed to teach them startup strategies, it’s clear that improving the world is serious business at UConn.

The program is part of an exchange that is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to promote a better understanding of American history, government, and society abroad and to help develop future leaders.

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UConn Awarded U.S. Dept. of State Grant for Sports Exchange Program with South Africa

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STORRS, Conn. – For the second year in a row, the University of Connecticut has been awarded $225,000 for an International Sports Programming Initiative exchange grant by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) SportsUnited Division. The grant will fund the Sports for Social Change two-way exchange program, aimed at promoting collaboration, knowledge sharing and mutual understanding between the U.S. and South Africa. The program increases the professional capacity of individuals who design and manage community or school youth sport programs that function as tools for fostering positive social change.

The University of Connecticut’s Global Training and Development Institute (GTDI), located in the UConn Office of Global Affairs, developed and piloted the Sports for Social Change program in Hong Kong in 2012. The success of the pilot program led to the development of a similar program for South Africa.

Roy Pietro, Principal Investigator for the program and Director of the GTDI, explains that what makes this program unique is its focus on the “role of youth sports as a significant factor in promoting educational success, psychosocial development, tolerance, cross-cultural understanding and conflict resolution.” The program serves as both an educational and cultural exchange, which will enable American and South African youth sport administrators to share their experiences, challenges and successes in managing and organizing youth sport programs.

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