UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

05/14/2023 | News release | Distributed by Public on 05/15/2023 00:41

UNESCO, Government of Odisha and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences come together for ‘Fit For Life' programme

The Government of Odisha and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences joined forces to support UNESCO's Fit For Life programme, reaffirming that sport can have a powerful impact on life skills development. UNESCO's Fit for Life programme, a new sport-based flagship, is designed to tackle contemporary challenges such as physical inactivity, mental health issues and inequality to foster peaceful, inclusive and resilient societies.

With the cognizance that sports provide productive pathways for societies, the partnership seeks to strengthen capacities, produce high quality data and foster research to stimulate social transformations conducive to the universal values of peace, human dignity and inclusion.

UNESCO as the United Nations' lead agency for Physical Education and Sport aims to strengthen the global framework on the use of sport for development and peace.
Eunsong KimProgramme Specialist and Head of Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO New Delhi

Through training of trainers in schools and at the grassroots, this partnership will leverage the potential of sport by advocating for systematization and institutionalization of value-based education through sport. The diverse range of collaborative initiatives will seek to create a framework of thematic indicators, intended to support and complement the global indicators under the Fit For Life 'data strategy', to measure sports' contribution to the different goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

UNESCO New Delhi
Sports for youth, youth for future - is the vision of our Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and we are guided by it. Promoting physical and mental fitness is core to many our initiatives. We are delighted to be associated with UNESCO and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences. Our visions are aligned, and we look forward to collectively making a positive impact in the society.
Vineel KrishnaCommissioner-cum-Secretary, Sports & Youth Services Department, Govt. of Odisha

Fit for Life echoes UNESCO's Kazan Action Plan, which world governments are party to, and its approach to use sport as a potent tool to promote health prospects and collective action, and ultimately the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The framework aims to support governments in tracking the success of their sport-based programmes, while helping the sport and development community to elaborate evidence-based arguments for investing in sport.

We are glad to partner with the State Government of Odisha for advancing UNESCO's 'Fit For Life' Programme to achieve a threefold goal-healthy people, healthy family and healthy society.
Professor Achyuta SamantaFounder of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences

In an ever-growing sporting infrastructure in India, Odisha's world class sports facilities and dynamic sports policies and schemes definitely constitute an asset for the sport loving nation. Simultaneously, there is growing enthusiasm for greater recognition of sport as a cross-cutting, cross-sectional means of fostering peace, inclusive and sustainable development, gender equality and more, at the national, regional and local levels.

UNESCO in its recent publication entitled 'More Than A Game,' dwells on the idea that better training programmes for sports for development (S4D) personnel as well as greater opportunities for women to join the S4D sector as trainers and in other roles will be vital for the future growth of the sector in the country. Once these occupational standards are in place, sports-based programmes under government supported schemes would become mainstream.

To this end, the partnership will be used as an opportunity to define a new message from sports as leverage for social inclusion, and gender equality, particularly at the grassroots level.