Innovator of the Week: Ibrahim

Engaging Youth Leaders through Unified Football from Lebanon

Led by: Ibrahim
Special Olympics Lebanon

The following post was written by Ibrahim, a Special Olympics youth leader from Lebanon. Ibrahim makes it his mission to strengthen inclusion in his community. Check out how he worked to #innovateforinclusion!

The project’s purpose was to organize a Unified soccer match and it was an amazing experience especially due to the athlete’s spirit. We were able to organize 15 activities which would culminate with a final tournament. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, we were only able to do 9 of our activities and have had to postpone our tournament.

To me, the most memorable moments throughout the implementation of my project were getting to see the light in the athlete’s eyes when they were on the field. It was incredible and I am speechless in describing the memories. After many awareness sessions and unified matches, I was able to see acceptance increase in each of the schools we entered.

There were a great number of schools reaching out to be a part of this project and we had amazing memories and opportunities each. Here I thank SO Lebanon for giving me this great opportunity to join their team and believing in me. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Although I am sad about the pandemic halting my project, I hope to continue implementing this project in the upcoming future within better conditions.

The Special Olympics Youth Innovation Grant initiative is supported through partnerships with SNF, Hasbro Inc., the Office of Special Education Programs at the United States Department of Education, Samuel Family Foundation, Microsoft Corporation, Lane Global Youth Leadership, PMIEF, and Kantar. Learn more about these inspiring projects at SpecialOlympicsGlobalYouthProjects.org.