Winner: University of Worcester
Project: A global approach to inclusive sport
In 2012, the University of Worcester introduced the UK’s first degree in coaching and disability sport. It has since fostered a global reputation in the field by developing the University of Worcester Arena, which is the country’s first sports venue designed with wheelchair athletes in mind, and by creating the International Centre for Inclusive Sport.
The centre is a network of researchers, coaches, practitioners and teachers dedicated to forming partnerships and sharing best practice in both teaching and infrastructure projects, with the aim of making participation in sport easier for marginalised groups.
One of these partnerships is with Beijing Sport University (BSU), which has produced more Olympic and Paralympic medalists than any other university in the world. In 2017, a delegation from BSU visited Worcester to find out about its approach to inclusion. This led to a joint project to hold the world’s first international inclusive sport symposium, which took place in November 2017 in Beijing; to 13 BSU students beginning studies at Worcester; and more than 200 workshops in Beijing that will train thousands of teachers in an inclusive approach to physical education.
Other partnerships have been forged in Japan, including with Toin University, the organising committee of Tokyo 2020, the Japanese Paralympic committee and the Nippon Foundation. Pacific Consultants, which is designing a national inclusive sports facility in Japan, visited the University of Worcester Arena in 2017 to pick up design tips.
Further international partnerships are being set up in Turkey, the United States, North and South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia, as well as throughout Europe. In addition, Worcester has teamed up with the World Academy of Sport to launch the Global Physical Education/Sport Teacher Training Centre, to deliver inclusive sport education to teachers around the world. One of its first projects will be a programme for the IPC Academy, the global education division of the International Paralympic Committee.
In all, Worcester’s School of Sport and Exercise Science has hosted more than 30 international delegations over the past 18 months from universities, government ministries and sports governing bodies, as well as holding the European Federation of Adapted Physical Activity’s annual conference in 2018, attended by more than 250 delegates. More recently, a member of Worcester’s sports staff has been invited to become head coach of the Czech Republic’s national blind football team.
Runner-up: University of the West of England
Project: Project Zulu
Project Zulu is the brainchild of Ben Knight, a senior education lecturer at the University of the West of England (UWE), who had worked in the KwaZulu-Natal region of east South Africa.
He set up the charity, drawing on a network of contacts in both South Africa and the UK, to support educational development in the Madadeni and Dundee townships in the region. The university took over the running of the charity in January 2018.
Project Zulu has three elements. The first is an annual choir tour to England by children from six schools in the Madadeni township, raising money that is then ploughed back into the schools to meet specific needs, such as new classrooms, teacher training, computer networks or clean water. Next, it involves around 40 summer volunteering places for UWE students in Madadeni and Dundee schools, in which students use the skills they have developed in teaching, special educational needs support, engineering and IT.
Finally, the project includes academic research into the impact of this work, plus the organisation of professional development conferences for teachers in the KwaZulu-Natal region and further academic collaborations and publications.
The choir tour is sponsored through fundraising, while the student volunteers are supported by international bursaries and researchers’ expenses are paid by their faculties.
The project helps broaden the horizons of all involved. For each of the 20 children who came to England on the choir tour in 2018, the trip was their first visit overseas. They stayed with host families and visited schools, joining classrooms with local children who also benefitted from the interaction. The student volunteers, nearly half of whom qualified for UWE’s means-tested bursary, also stayed with host families, enhancing their knowledge of Africa as well as of teaching.
Six academic research projects are now being undertaken as a result of Project Zulu. Funds for the project are helping to build a community sports field for all schools across Madadeni and there are plans to expand the project into a third township.
Runner-up: University of the West of England
Project: International Water Security Network
Eight million people in Uganda do not have access to safe drinking water or adequate sanitation. The University of the West of England’s International Water Security Network has been involved in two projects designed to make this kind of access easier for people in Kisoro, a town in the remote south-west region of Uganda, through its new water innovation hub. One project is focused on improving water quality, the other on turning urine into electric lighting.
Kisoro has regularly hosted UWE students through the university’s global water security programme, which offers internships around the world in social sciences, engineering, journalism and water science.
In August 2017, the town asked for help with water management. Many of the district’s rainwater harvesting tanks were cracking and failing within a few years of construction, and it was looking to UWE to help identify why this was – as well as to find out what the effect was on the quality of water stored in the tanks, and how it could be improved. A team of civil engineering students, led by Chad Staddon, director of the International Water Security Network, and Alan Cook, UWE’s water engineer, looked into what the problem was with the tanks. A multidisciplinary team also studied the chemical and bacteriological quality of stored rainwater and practical, low-cost ways of filtering and purifying water supplies.
They found critical failures in the curing of cement used for the tanks and in the tanks’ maintenance, as well as significant contamination of the water supply; this information is now being used to manage the network of tanks in the district more effectively. Further testing will now take place, followed by trials of new water treatments suitable for household use.
At the same time, a second team from UWE launched its first field trials in Kisoro of Pee Power technology, which converts urine into electricity. The technology was used at a girls boarding school that had no access to mains electricity, providing lighting for a toilet block. It improved safety, deterring predatory men from the site and allowing the students to spot potentially dangerous snakes and spiders. They also used the lights to study at night.
As well as helping communities in Kisoro, these projects have given UWE students experience of conducting field research in a foreign country and collecting reliable data, enhancing their future employability.