The Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy

Peacebuilding through Collaboration

General Projects: Score for Peace

The mission of Score For Peace is to promote peacemaking and post-conflict recovery between peoples and nations through the global sports of soccer and basketball. Score For Peace uses the power of sports to bring people together, to teach life lessons, and to attract participants to our educational and professional development programs.

Voice of America Interview

Latest News

Score For Peace presents Fair Play Award at 2009 AC Milan tournament

FC Metro Rapids, the championship winner of the U-15 boys category at the 2009 AC Milan Continental Cup Tournament in Cleveland, OH, became the first team ever to receive the Score For Peace Fair Play Award. The Rapids, coming from Dayton, OH, received only one yellow card during their six games. Throughout the team’s entire 6-year history, it has received only one red card.
The award, a 17” trophy designed and produced in Italy, was presented to the Rapids on July 3rd by Dodge Fielding, the Executive Director of Score For Peace. Mounted on five brass pillars is an acrylic soccer ball, the trophy represents the highest values of sportsmanship inherent in and exemplified by the world’s most popular sport.

In its fourth year, the AC Milan Continental Cup is the fastest growing international youth soccer tournament in the United States. Participating athletes have the chance of a lifetime to play competitive soccer against some of the top teams from across the United States and around the world.

About Score For Peace

Score For Peace was founded in 2007 to coordinate the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy’s (IMTD) sports-related peacebuilding programs. Holding true to IMTD’s belief that fostering positive relationships requires contact outside of formal channels, Score For Peace seeks to improve people-to-people interaction through sports.

Conflict Resolution

Score For Peace provides conflict resolution training for individuals through sports, workshops and class instruction. Score For Peace benefits from the wealth of knowledge and experience that IMTD brings to the field of conflict resolution.

Peacebuilding

Given the universal appeal of soccer and basketball, Score For Peace is able to build bridges between individuals, groups and nations that would otherwise remain in conflict. Once established, these bridges open the door for other peacebuilding activities such as educational programs, vocational training and international matches promoting people-to-people interaction and mutual understanding.

Soccer and Vocational Training

Score For Peace seamlessly integrates sports with education and vocational training. Combined with sports coaching, the program’s Lifetime Opportunity Centers teach at-risk young men and women life skills and employability skills. Upon completion of the 9-month curriculum, graduates will be placed in mentoring, internship and/or employment positions with local employers.

Projects

Colombia – Podemos

For many years, armed factions in Colombia have made the recruitment and use of children common practice. As in many conflict-affected societies, vulnerability to violence in Colombia is often intensified by poverty and lack of educational opportunities. Limited education has a disproportionate impact on the skills, productivity, and earning potential of youth.
The PODEMOS project is an innovative job training program for at-risk youth that uses soccer development as an incentive for young men and women to engage in vocational and life skills training.

Using the appeal of soccer and the promise of world-class coaching by AC Milan staff, the PODEMOS Lifetime Opportunity Centers provide an alternative, broad-based, inclusive education and vocational training program for at-risk youth. PODEMOS targets all war-affected youth based on well-identified needs rather than combatant status. The program will include male and female participants ages 15 to 24 that have exhibited key characteristics indicating vulnerability to violence, including low levels of education, persistent unemployment, severe symptoms of psychological distress, and conflicts within community members.

To bolster the effectiveness of our program, the PODEMOS Centers will partner with local businesses to provide youth with knowledge and skills that are closely linked to the needs of the local economy. With its emphasis on achieving employability through the sport of soccer, the PODEMOS Lifetime Opportunity Centers will foster socioeconomic mobility and the reduction of violence in Colombia.

In partnership with AC Milan, the world’s most successful professional soccer club, PODEMOS will promote literacy, computer skills, citizenship and civic participation, specialized vocational training, and employability skills. The AC Milan Academy in Bucaramanga, Colombia will be the first PODEMOS Lifetime Opportunity Center in Colombia. Within five years, we intend to establish a network of PODEMOS Lifetime Opportunity centers throughout the country.

The PODEMOS Centers will complement Colombia’s existing educational system, serving at-risk youth not currently enrolled in educational institutions. Upon completion of the PODEMOS program, participants will be placed in apprenticeships, internships, and/or employment with local employers-thereby enhancing their ability to join the formal labor market.

Liberia – Guns to goals

After 14 years of civil war, Liberia has seen a cessation of hostilities, the signing of the Accra Comprehensive Peace Accord in August 2003, and the historic election of Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president in Africa, in 2005. Demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration of ex-combatants (child soldiers) are first priorities of the Johnson-Sirleaf administration. Thousands of armed youths remain on the streets of major cities and towns—and pose the single greatest security threat to civil society in Liberia. With no education, employability skills or motivation, these young men and women have few prospects and are turning to crime as a means to make ends meet.

Score For Peace’s project in Liberia focuses on the rehabilitation and reintegration of war-affected youth (”ex-combatants”, “child soldiers”) throughout the country. This is the Guns To Goals Program, which uses soccer as an incentive and seamlessly integrates education and vocational training delivered by the program’s Lifetime Opportunity Centers. The Centers’ 9-month curriculum will teach at-risk young men and women life skills, employability skills, and soccer. Upon completion of the course, participants will be placed in mentoring, internship and/or employment positions with local employers. The centers will complement Liberia’s existing educational system, serving war-affected youth not currently enrolled in educational institutions.

A total of 19 Lifetime Opportunity Centers with companion soccer camps are planned in the five-year span of the program. At the end of five years, our Guns To Goals program will have positively affected the lives of over 15,000 Liberian young men and women.

IMTD’s interest in Liberia dates back to 1993 during the height of the civil war. At that time, Ambassador McDonald worked with the Carter Center in its search for lasting peace by establishing a Working Group for Peacebuilding in Liberia, which created the Liberian Initiative for Peace and Conflict Resolution (LIPCORE). A second training took place in February 1995 in the Ivory Coast, before violence broke out again in Liberia in 1996. Since the cessation of hostilities and the historic election of Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2005, IMTD has been called on regularly by the Liberian government to train diplomats, legislators, security forces and others in peace building and conflict resolution, as recently in March of 2009.

Improving U.S.-Libya relations through people-to-people interaction

Between 1981 and 2004, communication between the US and Libya was effectively shut down. As a result, a generation of Libyan and American citizens has had little or no interaction with one another. The two countries have begun to work together now that Libya has reached out to the West and the US has normalized relations. Still in its nascent stages, the main context of this re-engagement has been through track one (government) and track three (business) diplomacy.

IMTD and Score for Peace believe that a true deepening of the US-Libyan relationship requires interactions outside the formal channels of business and politics. Borrowing from its people-focused approach, IMTD has worked for four years to enhance people-to-people interactions between Libya and the United States through a soccer exchange.

IMTD has negotiated with the leadership of a leading Major League Soccer club and the Libyan Football Federation (LFF) to arrange home-and-away matches between the club and the Libyan National Soccer Team. The Score for Peace team is currently working on the logistics of the first match as well as facilitating the negotiation of an acceptable contract for all parties.