provide language classes in the lead-up to inter-community events to organize management workshops for support staff and to create educational exchange programmes:
A special program for a week could be integrated into the school calendars, which maybe focuses on cultural education in combination with sport. This way the children have the chance to get to know each other under a real-life situation, because a week will set a different framework than a two-day event. [Further,] an exchange between teachers could happen. This would be a good way, for example, if Sinhalese teachers could guest-lecture at a Tamil school and vice versa. And this could lead into student exchange programs, because the students would follow the ideas of their teachers.
Ethnically mixed teams
A strong focus on ethnically mixed teams can foster mutual understanding and appreciation during the sport event. Sport activities were identified as convincing superordinate goals where interaction and cooperation were required to achieve common objectives. Sport events can be enhanced when participants from divided communities are combined into one ‘national team’, who face a friendly international team as their opponents (such as a team of volunteers or sport tourists). As long as the focus is kept on the ‘fun side’ of the games, this strategy is expected to merge the Sri Lankan groups and contribute to an increased team spirit and trust building without creating lasting negative impacts on the international squad.
Offer a variety of events
Engaging in both special events and regular sport programmes is a strategy that could maximize peaceful outcomes. Regularly scheduled sport programmes allow for a deepening and intensification of contacts and friendships, while large-scale special events such as inter-community festivals enable an extension of relationships to the wider community. This combination promises to cater for both the benefits of regular contact with familiar people (e.g. bonding, trust, confidence building) and the special character of events as a booster for excitement, entertainment and international tourism (bridging, celebrating, expanding perspectives).
Community exchange programmes
Once sport events and programmes have been established, they could be used as the starting point for generating other community exchange programmes.
This idea links with the so-called ‘twin-city’ interactions that have been successfully implemented in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (Gasser and Levinsen, 2004). Here, municipal authorities partner with another municipality from across the ethnic divide to organize community football projects. If strategically planned, community exchanges are likely to ignite partnerships and continuous cooperation also beyond the sports arena.
Educational support
The educational sector could provide additional opportunities for event leverage. A close cooperation with local schools can generate improved social and communication skills among children. Local schools can for example address human rights and community values through sport education.
Armstrong (2004) in his analysis of the Don Bosco Youth Project in post-war Liberia showed that sport programmes can be successfully combined with
education and social, legal and/or health assistance for young participants.
Similarly, sport event organizers can work with schools to communicate and teach norms and values such as intergroup togetherness, reconciliation, cultural understanding, intergroup appreciation, and equitable and socially just behaviour, preparing young participants for upcoming events. From a language perspective, linking the sport event activities to school curricula can prepare youth to communicate better with others at inter-community encounters.
Before events, local schools and educational institutions can teach participants basic terms, phrases and commands in relevant languages. Post-event, schools can facilitate the continuation of positive shared experiences through pen- friendships or school exchanges.
Networking
In the attempt to reach a wider audience and to leverage events’ success, event organizers and communities should expand and intensify their connections with key decision makers to generate additional political and financial benefits.
Support from different levels of government can secure political backing, financial contributions and permission for the staging and leveraging of future inter-community sport events. As a strategic partner, the government can stage ancillary events such as street parades or cultural festivals that tie in with the theme of a sport event. Such leverage strategies could encourage more people to attend, lengthen visitor stays in the community and increase tourism spending (Chalip, 2004; O’Brien, 2007; O’Brien and Chalip, 2008). Simultaneously, to achieve social leverage, the government could use the sport events as a ‘hook’
to stage relevant social marketing and health campaigns, for instance educating people on important issues such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis or drug use.
Leveraging the media
In line with Chalip’s (2004, 2006) argument for ‘longer-term event leverage’, the media represents an opportunity to enforce the message of peace to wider audiences. This can be achieved prior to the event, through regional advertising and promotional campaigns that showcase the ‘peaceful host region’. After the event, the media can report the positive social outcomes of the event, with a focus on the joint community efforts required to design a peaceful and inclusive environment ‘for all’. Such a strategy can foster improved images of communities and increase the reputational capital of organizers. Additionally, it promises to increase participation levels at future events, as domestic visitors and international tourists may be attracted by the peace-activities.
Build business partnerships
Communities can benefit from closer business partnerships and additional funding sources generated through events. On a small community scale, local
businesses and sponsors may in the long run create ‘an event-related look-and- feel’ (Chalip, 2004, p. 230) in the communities by executing event-related products, promotions and theming tactics. For example, sponsors can use the peace theme on apparel such as T-shirts or friendship bands, or incorporate the peace theme into their event advertising and sponsorship campaigns.
Additionally, local businesses can design special promotions targeted at event visitors and tourists, such as providing deals, vouchers or raffles tied in with the event activities. However, the potential for business leverage needs to be seen in the context of rural communities in a developing world context as opposed to developed countries (Chalip and Leyns, 2002; Chalip and McGuirty, 2004;
O’Brien, 2007), where financial opportunities are greater and many activities are related to the community context in which the event is held.
Conclusion
For many years, the ability of sport events to serve as a vehicle for intergroup development and peace has been promoted by governments around the world.
However, empirical research that has investigated inter-community sport events in divided societies remains scarce. To fill this gap, this chapter set out to analyse two inter-community sport events and their capacity to provide opportunities for celebration, entertainment, social interaction and a reduction in geographical and psychological barriers between the host community and visitors.
The research revealed that sport presents a cultural reference point to be shared with ‘others’. Sport events as superordinate goals are able to reduce intergroup distance and create inclusive identity feelings, as they encourage people from different groups to come together and work towards a common purpose. This mutual process weakens group boundaries and changes attitudes and behaviour in the short term, which shows that sport events can provide people from disparate groups with a ‘taste of inclusiveness’ and ‘moment of shared identity’.
Nine strategies were identified as being useful for creating, maximizing, leveraging and sustaining social benefits arising from community sport events, they include: creating the right environment; focus on the young; ethnically mix teams; a variety of events; community exchange programmes; educational support; networking; leveraging the media; and build business partnerships. By implementing these strategies, sport events can be used as convincing and promising superordinate goals for disparate communities, as they can advance social togetherness, facilitate trust and appreciation between individuals and groups, and lead to a peaceful co-existence of communities within and beyond event borders.
While inter-community sport events should be encouraged and expanded as part of an active social development process, it is too much to expect sport events to have a major impact on overall inter-community relations in the absence of a political settlement in divided societies. However, sport events as one type of tourism product integrated within a larger agenda of social and
political reform can make a modest contribution to bridging divides between disparate communities.
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8 Domestic Tourism and Peace: the Atlanta Peace Trails Experience
G.Y. L
ash1, a. K
aYs
mith2and C. s
mith31Tourism For Peace LLC, 2Partnerships In Peace, 3Atlanta City Council Member
… tourism is much more than just a matter of economics … of creating jobs … and raising government revenue. Tourism is all of these things, but it is also a global celebration of diversity and a universal ring of friendship … Tourism celebrates cultural identity rather than subverting it. No global industry is more fiercely competitive than tourism, yet there is a strong history of collaboration between countries, destinations, hoteliers, suppliers, carriers, and travel professionals – all of whom interact through international organizations formed for that purpose. Tourism is a great bridge-builder that offers us a unique opportunity to enrich travelers in a way that lingers long after their return home.
(Hon. Jennifer Smith, Premier of Bermuda, 2003) As the quotation affirms, tourism promotes cooperation among rivals, celebrates cultural diversity and builds bridges between visitor and those visited.
It is a connector and glue of community – bringing travellers together from all ideological strata, as well as in this case study, uniting disparate peace organizations and venues in common goals. It creates paths of peace wherever it is implemented with care and respect. Tourism is an educational tool for unifying humanity, and a catalyst to manifesting peace on the planet.