London : Special Olympics chairman Timothy Shriver – whose organisation celebrates 50 years in 2018 – dreams of a world in which nobody stands in the way of people with intellectual disabilities who want to take part in sport.
Shriver, whose mother Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the Special Olympics, oversees a body that has around five million athletes with intellectual disabilities and holds 100,000 events around the world annually.
Events to mark this year’s anniversary include a “Global Day of Inclusion” at Soldier Field, Chicago, which hosted the first International Special Olympics Summer Games in July 1968.
Timothy Shriver, nephew of assassinated US president John F Kennedy, says he hopes ordinary people will help turn the tide of prejudice and enable their goal to be achieved.
“I think you can roll back prejudice significantly but not completely,” he told AFP in a phone interview from his office in Washington DC.
“The goal is to have unified sports in every school and club round the world. Not most, not some, not a good number, but all. I would say sports clubs at the moment, there are probably perhaps four percent who do.
“There is a long way to go but we live in an era when change can happen quickly and we think in our 50th anniversary it can happen.”
Shriver, a teacher by profession, who became chairman of the Special Olympics in 1996, says when ordinary people speak up the issue will gain momentum.
“When the average person says that and the health centre opens up and doctors treat them (people with intellectual disabilities) and schools are open as well as communities to them and a job is within reach, once we get to that tipping point of the community then we have a chance. And that is what we are looking for.”
