Like millions of other people all over the world, I slept little last Tuesday night! I followed CNN’s comprehensive and masterful running-commentary of the US Presidential elections. Early Wednesday morning, eyes still wide awake, I listened to the rousing acceptance speech of President-elect Barack Obama! His words came alive, leaping at me like the flames of a burning fire. His words pierced my heart, challenged my role in the world and my contributions to humanity, and unearthed lingering doubts, fears and the despair that had long held me back from doing much more than I have ever done. But like batteries, they also provided the charge to ‘resurrect’ from the charred debris my faith in the human capacity to do the impossible. His words reminded me of what I tell my students at the International Academy: that they can be whatever they choose to be; that they must believe in the human capacity to achieve whatever their heads can conceive and their hearts believe; that they must dream big dreams; that although the journey may not be easy, fulfillment at the destination is certain; that they must look at the future with unshaken hope; that what they need the most on this journey is an unshaken conviction and belief that at the end they would discover the satisfaction that comes from knowing they have played their own part in making their world a better place than they met it. I see them become different students after that, going about their challenging task of combining education with sports with fire in their eyes!

As I listened to Obama I recalled my encounter with Bill Clinton a few years ago at the University of Rhode Island where he came to speak to our audience of scholar-athletes from over 150 countries about the globalization of humanity – touching lives and making a difference through the work we all do! How our responsibility to humanity is to make the world a better place for the next generation! I recalled also my encounter with Dr. Jubril Diallo, Senegalese, head of the Youth Forum of the United Nations with responsibility to create projects that will empower the youths and make them effective tools in the Millennium Development Goal Project to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, HIV/AIDS and hunger in the world. One of such projects is empowering the youths with scholarship and sports!

Even as I write this I recall Tony Blair’s new initiative, an internet-based, major life changing project called ‘beyond sports’ established as a tool to empower the youths of the world.

There is a growing universal outcry to empower the youths of the world using their greatest passion as a medium of reaching them. But sports have gone beyond being catalysts or tools of change. They have become an end in themselves. From being seen as recreational activities, sports have become major economic emancipators, one of the fastest emerging and growing industries in the world. Sports are there right before the world, waiting, but the world still sees them as too simple, too good to be true! How can a fun activity be powerful enough as to effect change to the world? So, the latency remains. Exploiting the universal passion for sports to bring about positive change in my country, and make life a little bit better for the next generation is my ultimate dream. I may have been on that path for some years now, but Barack Obama, last Wednesday morning, re-charged my batteries to keep that flame burning even brighter in my heart!