Right To Dream Calls For African Paralympic Focus
Tom Vernon, the founder and CEO of Right to Dream, has called for the Paralympic movement to focus its attention on Africa following the success of London 2012.
Right to Dream began work in Ghana more than a decade ago, initially focusing on football, but its work has spread to other sports, including Paralympic sports, with the further aim of improving education in the country.
With the programme’s support, Ghana sent its largest ever team to the Paralympics. Mumuni Alem, a road cyclist in the C1-3 category; Raphael Nkegbe Botsyo (pictured), who competed in the men’s 100m T54; Anita Fordjour, a female wheelchair sprinter who competed in the 100m and 200m T53; and powerlifter, Charles Narh Teye.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with sportindustry.biz, Vernon said: ‘All four of our guys qualified by right for London 2012, which is fantastic, and what we are trying to do is show that the Paralympic movement needs to focus more on Africa. A huge proportion of people with a disability come from Africa, yet their representation at the Paralympics is fairly limited. So we wanted to try and announce Africa in the space a bit more.
‘We wanted to launch a Paralympic Academy that followed the same sort of model as our football programme. The idea was to identify talent, and then take them through the same sort of development that we had done with our footballers, with the outcomes being international education and the chance to compete globally.’
While they were unable to secure a first medal for Ghana, Alem and Fordjour both managed to qualify for their respective finals.
