Friday, October 17, 2008

Beginnings: Part One


We are so excited about the dakband project, the reception it is receiving from individuals, corporate organizations, fundraising initiatives and especially schools. In fact we have been invited to present the dakband project at the Be the Change Youth Leadership and Action Day, on November 21, for the Halton Catholic School Board.

However, as promised, I’ll resume the story of the dakband genesis….A couple of years ago I was invited to speak at the inaugural conference of the ‘Church and Sport’ a new sector of the Roman Catholic Church. The conference was hosted by the Vatican and I was one of fifty people from around the world invited to participate, and only one of 10 invited to actually speak! I was also the only non- catholic participant. It was literally one of my life’s highlights, and yes, I did meet Pope Benedict! The invitation arose from work and research of my other company, Justplay Sports Services, www.wejustplay.com. The significance being, that it was this event that eventually inspired the development of the dakband project.

At one point, near the end of the conference, one of the Bishops asked my panel of speakers if there was any hope that we, as a global community, could salvage or restore the domain of sport to its virtuous or Olympic origins (each of the four panel members had unfortunately just painted a rather dismal picture of the state of youth and professional sports). I responded with a verse from the bible that tells us perseverance produces character, and character, hope. And inspired by that hope I left the conference with a mission to create a tool that would help reestablish the community building virtues of sport.

Stay tuned for Part two……

Please don't forget our give away (see our first post). Leave a comment about an act of kindness that touched you!

At the end of each blog I am going suggest tracking a particular dakband. So please check out band # 31621 at our website tracking page www.deliberateactsofkindness.com/track/index.html


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