Motswana volunteer lands Olympic post
Calistus Kolantsho | Friday May 31, 2019 20:13
Ramaabya joined the local Sport Volunteer Movement (SVM) in 2009 and was appointed as the Young Ambassador of the second Youth Olympic Games Nanjing 2014.
The 28-year-old has been appointed into the Coordination Commission for Youth Olympic Games 2022 to be held in Dakar, Senegal.
Botswana lost the bid to host the Youth Olympic Games to Senegal. But there is some consolation as Ramaabya was, on May 13, appointed to the IOC Commission by the sports organisation president, Thomas Bach.
He said the appointment came as a surprise, as all the projects he has been doing were meant to benefit Botswana. Ramaabya added that it is clear that he has attracted the attention of the world. He is the first Motswana to be appointed to an IOC Commission.
“I am not aware of the criteria used to appoint IOC Commission members, but they obviously consider the impact that one has made in sport and the community. I was selected as the Young Ambassador in 2014 after going through an interview,” he said. In 2015, he was a judge in the IOC medal design competition. He said, in 2016, the IOC re-branded the Young Ambassador programmes into Young Change Makers, which allowed those who had served as young ambassadors before, to continue serving.
He said IOC releases funds annually for community projects, through a sponsorship deal with Panasonic. Ramaabya said in 2017 he started a project, which was meant to promote the inclusion of people with disability in sport.
“The first implementation was at the University of Botswana, where we held the first edition of the games. We held another edition of the games in the northern part of the country in partnership with Special Olympics Botswana. I encouraged the athletes that despite their inabilities, they have other strong abilities that they can use to become better people in life,” he said.
Ramaabya said through the project, he was invited to different international conferences such as Advancing Women in Leadership Conference that was held in Kigali, Rwanda, where he was one of the panellists. “I was also invited to Osaka and Tokyo at the invitation of Panasonic and I got the opportunity to present my project, still in 2017. It was a build up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics,” he said.
Last year, Bach invited Ramaabya to attend Olympism in the Action forum that was held during the third Youth Olympic Games in Buinos Aires, Argentina.
“It was an opportunity for me to share with the world what I am doing in Botswana. I have another project that I am doing in Hatsalatladi village in the Kweneng District. The IOC supports the project. I was using Olympic values to inspire students in that village. The conditions there are rough. They do not even have water,” Ramaabya said.
Meanwhile, Ramaabya said it is also surprising that he is not getting much recognition in Botswana as compared to other countries.
“I can be invited to speak in other countries, but I do not receive such invites here. They just ignore me and they thought after the Nanjing Games my role was done,” he said with apparent disappointment.