United by sport
United by sport
We leverage the transformational power of sport to promote equality and combat all forms of hate and intolerance.
Children during “Sport in the Service of Peace” activities - from the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. Photo by Efrat Sa’ar.
Marginalized communities worldwide experience significant hate and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and socioeconomic status. This manifests in the form of systemic inequalities, hate speech, violence, social exclusion, and stereotyping.
The rise of populism and nationalism has worsened the situation, with far-right movements scapegoating these groups, fueling xenophobia, racism, and religious intolerance.
Online hate speech and disinformation further amplify these challenges, leading to real-world acts of hate and discrimination. This toxic rhetoric normalizes hate speech, emboldens discriminatory behavior, and can even incite violence.
The United by Sport program strives to leverage the transformational power of sport to promote equality and fight hate and discrimination, which can come in all its forms, spanning various grounds such as religion or belief, racial or ethnic origin, gender, sex, ability, age, sexual orientation, and more. It has been created to provide support to organizations that fight such hate and discrimination through sport or in the sport sector.
Circus Zambia’s activities in Zambia. Photo by: Loliwe Photography.
In the first request for proposals for the United by Sport program, two types of support were made available to organizations that fight such hate and discrimination through sport or in the sport sector. Organizations were able to apply under these two different categories:
• Project Specific Support: funding for new projects ranging from a minimum amount of 150,000 EUR to a maximum amount of 700,000 EUR.
• General Support: Funding for general operations of organizations whose regular programming is fully aligned with the United by Sport criteria up to 50,000 EUR per year for a maximum of three years (minimum amount 10,000 EUR, maximum amount 150,000 EUR).
After a comprehensive selection process, 17 organizations were selected to receive funding from the adidas Foundation for General Support, while an additional 17 organizations will receive Project Specific funding.
The United by Sport partners will run programs in 31 countries spread all over the globe, from Australia to Colombia and from Ukraine to South Africa.
Throughout implementation we will support our partners in the United by Sport program to further strengthen their expertise in combating hate and discrimination, providing access to resources and opportunities to engage in shared learning and collaboration.
