Our Common Humanity in the Information Age. Principles and Values for Development

SPORTS AND SOLIDARIT Y 
Alain Lemieux, President, World Sports Alliance
As Aristotle said it, “Man is a social Animal”, and like some other social insects for ex: 
ants, bees and termites, we have a tendency to live in groups. Humans form effective, 
coordinated, division-of-labour groupings at several levels. It begins with Primary, face-
to-face; groups which later get organized into city-states, and these into nations. At each 
level, there is not only cooperation; but competition as well; both within and between the 
groups.
When we think of the one unifying factor underlying all our diversities, it would be our 
principles and values. Yes indeed, it’s our principles and values that make us human; that 
define our common humanity.
When we say Principles and Values of Holistic Development, What exactly do we mean? 
How do we define Holistic Development? We always thought that there is no easy 
answer for this, but I think there is…for me and my team at the World Sports Alliance, 
the answer is Sport. For me, Sport is the liveliest of activities you can indulge in. So lets 
do sport and “lively up” a bit!
Apart from sparkling up our lives, sport has great potential for bringing people together. 
It teaches understanding, tolerance and love among people, which are the important 
values of life. The human race is the only species that is known to have intentionally or 
accidentally invented sports as part of culture rather than nature.

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The impact of sports on promoting economic development cannot be questioned. Some 
of the most popular organized sports festivals and tournaments have become major 
industries generating employment and creating growth opportunities. All manner of 
sports have been successfully used to bring individuals and groups from different 
cultures, social classes, religious creeds, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds together to 
interact at tournaments or sports festivals.
Socialization at sports festivals or during tournaments make the participants become 
more understanding and tolerant of other people’s views and interests. The eventual 
impact on society is that people learn to peacefully co-exist and resolve their differences 
more amicably rather than through violent or militant means.
I believe in the power of sport and the values and principles it promotes. And this belief 
led us to form the World Sports Alliance - a Public -Private Partnership in support of the 
MDGs. We seek to use sport as a catalyst to design and implement programmes for at-
risk youth, to facilitate in realizing the Millennium Developments Goals through an 
integrated approach.
Under the auspices of the NGO Section, DESA, we recently organized an Expert Panel 
Meeting on the design and development of pedagogical and didactic tools to teach about 
the MDGs using the medium of sport and physical education. The MDGs are not 
sufficiently talked about in academic circles and they are currently not a big part of the 
school/university curricula. Teaching institutions, insofar as they will be training the 
decision-makers and professionals of tomorrow, have an all-important role to play in the 
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The training modules are being 
developed to fill that void. And this is where the Information age becomes important, in 
helping us get the message across.
Some historians say Information Age is a term applied to the period where movement of 
information became faster than physical movement, more narrowly applying to the 1980s 
onward. Under conventional economic theory, the Information Age was the era where 
information was a scarce resource and its capture and distribution generated competitive 
advantage. So today the definition of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ includes the component of 
information. Access to information is becoming a critical factor by which countries are 
being judged upon by the global society as either haves or have-nots — information rich 
or information poor. So let us question, is ICT the solution to these problems? The new 
age of global communication, within certain limits is open to everybody and provides 
unlimited opportunity for us to broadcast our ideas.

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Chapter VI – Solidarity and Equity | 115 
We also have to accept the fact that with all the opportunities, the information age is also 
questioning every ideology, philosophy and tradition. In this sense, the information age 
could be both our threat and our challenge. And it is upon us to turn this threat into a 
challenge and then fight this challenge to make it an opportunity! While a parent is scared 
that their child might be getting corrupted with the exposure to the Internet generation, 
what they often forget is that it is part of the process of emerging as a Global Citizen.
A global citizen – someone who is "...aware of the wider world and has a sense of their 
own role as a world citizen; respects and values diversity; is willing to act to make the 
world a more equitable and sustainable place; and takes responsibility for their actions”, 
as defined by Oxfam, a renowned development and relief organization, with an 
educational site called Cool Planet which includes a curriculum for educators to teach 
good global citizenship. At the WSA, we are now in conversation with many, to come up 
with a system where kids in our centers would be able to communicate and talk to other 
kids from different centers around the world as part of a continuous cultural exchange 
programme. This is precisely how we could turn the information age from being a threat 
to a challenge or better still an opportunity - that could help us in transmitting the values 
and principles that help in the emergence of a unifying Humanity.
Joseph Wood, an American critic and writer, who said, “Technology made large 
populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable”. So our 
efforts should be directed towards taking this indispensable technology in fulfilling our 
hope of carrying forward the values and principles of our common humanity. To be able 
to translate this spirit into initiatives for Equity and Solidarity! As a businessman, I 
believe that for any nation processes of wealth creation are essential for us to meet its 
commitment to eradicating poverty, but what is important is that the governments 
consciously ensure that the process of economic development and growth enhances both 
equity and efficiency. In a developing and open economy and a democratic and open 
society, the drive to higher productivity must be accompanied by the creation of new 
employment opportunities. We need growth with equity and social justice. This is 
principle which should necessarily be followed in all development initiatives. In order to 
ensure equity in WSA programmes, we provide infrastructure and services in a way that 
even the poorest of the poor could have a chance to become globally competitive. WSA 
not only empowers people by giving them a dream but creates an enabling environment 
through its WSA Community centers that fosters the spirit of cooperation and teamwork, 
encourages solidarity while rewarding creativity, risk-taking and the spirit of adventure.
In the WSA programmes, constant and conscious efforts are made to ensure that the 
interests of vulnerable groups are incorporated in the design of the programme itself and 

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that all involved are committed to protecting and enhancing the participation of the 
underprivileged and marginalized sectors. It does so by sensitizing the communities and 
addressing this issue of equity and solidarity in the implementation process. We work 
with the community; from setting up of the centre to the implementation of the 
programmes. The WSA provides community involvement tools to identify the vulnerable 
groups within and helps them participate in the programmes. It relies on collective action, 
whereby the communities need to work with each other. Efforts are made to make the 
power of collective action visible for solidarity. Solidarity for us is collective action 
through shared responsibility and synergizing of efforts.
Our principle says we are an egalitarian programme. We believe in equality and offer 
equal opportunities to all, but with a “bias” towards the underprivileged. That is what I 
believe equity is all about!