Getting onside for World Peace Day

Over 250 local school students and sports coaches from around the globe will converge on the University of Brighton in a festival of football to celebrate the International Day of Peace on Wednesday 21 September.

The annual Football 4 Peace international training camp will bring together pupils from 14 local schools with delegates from Ghana, South Africa, South Korea, Czech Republic and Northern Ireland at the University of Brighton’s Falmer Campus.

Principal Lecturer and co-founder of Football 4 Peace, Dr Gary Stidder said:

“This is going to be a fantastic event and a wonderfully powerful way to mark World Peace Day. Today, in many different countries, it has touched the lives of 8,000 children, nearly 600 coaches and some of the sport’s leading institutions, from England’s Football Association to the Korean Sharing Movement and the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. Football is an international language across the world and the Football 4 Peace curriculum and methodology has helped to challenge prejudices and foster understanding in some of the most divided societies on the planet. Our international training camp, being held on World Peace Day, is a great way to involve local school pupils in a values-based approach to sport that emphasises trust, respect, inclusion and responsibility.”

Since 2001, academics from the University of Brighton have been working with sports and voluntary organisations around the world to help heal fractured societies and promote a fairer world. Football4Peace (F4P) emerged from a partnership between researchers at the University of Brighton and the World Sports Peace Project in Israel.

World Peace Day — officially The International Day of Peace — is observed annually on September 21. It was established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly to coincide with its opening session, which was held annually on the third Tuesday of September. The first Peace Day was observed in September 1982.