The Digicel Foundation yesterday donated $100,000 to Special Olympics T&T's (SOTT) ongoing fund-raising efforts to attend and compete at this year World Games in Los Angeles this July.
Penny Gomez, chief executive officer of the Foundation, made the presentation to Ferdinand Bibby, national director of SOTT at yesterday's media conference held at Chanka Trace, El Socorro.
The media event doubled as a launch of the Foundation's special needs awareness campaign titled "Just like You!" The latest social initiative by the Foundation aimed to carve out a new level of respect for persons with disabilities.
But as the gathering celebrated the new awareness drive, Bibby, lamented that his team was $800,000 short of its $1.2 million budget for an 85-member contingent: 65 athletes and 20 coaches.
This country's athletes were expected to compete in eight disciplines: Aquatics, athletics, basketball, equestrian, football, power-lighting, volleyball and bocce.
"We have always competed and represented the country well. At our last Games in Athens, Greece in 2011the team returned with 15 gold (medals), 15 silver (medals) and five bronze medals. We at Special Olympics don't always emphasize silverware, because the motto of Special Olympics is 'Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me live in the attempt.' Imagine 7,000 persons from 170 countries in one space competing in 25 different disciplines. That alone is an achievement. Normally, we tend to hide away our persons with intellectual disabilities and not give them the opportunities, so that alone is an achievement.
Bibby said, "Sponsorship means taking person with intellectual disabilities off the sidelines and moving them onto the field of play. Many persons with intellectual disabilities are discriminated (against) every day, either overtly or covertly. We are asking corporate citizens to come on board and assist us in paying the travel for athletes to go to the Games to experience World Games and be part of sports. We always look forward to the opportunity to compete and competition at the highest level is every athletes dream. We would like them to have the joy of participating at the World Games."
He lauded the commitment of Digicel and went on to explain that the telecoms company took genuine interest in all its activities and even had staff volunteer their services and impart knowledge, too.
The collaboration, he said, was more than just the giving of funds and declared the campaign spoke for itself citing that there was more to athlete involvement than just playing on the field.
Bibby underscored the need to raise awareness in society and let people understand and appreciate that athletes with intellectual disabilities were people, too, who occupied a similar space in a meaningful a way.
On learning of SOTT's significant shortfall of funds and the slow response from the state and the private sector, Gomez called on the business sector to match Digicel Foundation's contribution and ensure the national team continued to medal successful against the world.
She said, "One of the focuses of the Foundation is special needs. It was so important to raise awareness for persons with special needs and particularly to do it through SOTT and using the athletes as the focal point. The athletes, of course, are getting ready to go to the World Games in Los Angeles, in July. They are star athletes, so we thought it was important that we would build a campaign around them and the campaign is called Just like You!
"We wanted people to recognise that this is a space owned by everyone. It's a space for everyone. The same way people win, people lose, they feel pain, they celebrate, the athletes and persons with special needs have the ranges of emotions and in their daily course of living, and they are experiencing the same things like all of us."
