The Citizenship Through Sports Alliance believes that the effort to heighten awareness of citizenship must extend beyond the sports community. The reason that the CTSA has emphasized sports as a means for enhancing citizenship is because so many of the attributes of citizenship can be found within the sports experience: respect for self, respect for others, discipline, and a sense of fair play.

By reaching beyond the sports community, you are sharing the many rewards of great citizenship to a wider spectrum of people. To bridge the gap between sports and non-sports activities, it's necessary to be ready to demonstrate how the two can work together to build better communities.

In this section, the focus will be on methods of involving those outside the sports community to meet the challenge of raising the community's consciousness of citizenship to a new level. This can be accomplished by sponsoring and/or coordinating activities that spotlight citizenship in a variety of ways, and by involving athletes in co-curricular activities with others.

Below are suggested activities that will help your grass-roots organization create public awareness of the need and benefits of citizenship efforts in your community. Key to your success will be your ability to collaborate with other entities.

Working with Athletes

Show athletes how much the community has done for them - and how much they owe to the community. How? Ask coaches to list the cost of equipment, transportation, officials, and other collateral expenses associated with their sport. Then, have the coaches divide the cost of running the sport by the number of players on the team. Then, ask the players if any of them could afford to pay that much to play that sport. The answer, most likely, would be "no." Use that as an example of how collaboration works, and how it benefits the community.

After that exercise, it may be easier to convince athletes to participate in activities that promote citizenship in the community. Here are some suggested activities:

• Request athletes to support a non-sports activity at their school, such as asking them to hand out programs or take tickets at the spring band concert. Ask them to "adopt" another activity that they will support with their attendance, such as the drama club. This teaches respect for the efforts of others, which is an important component of citizenship.



• Provide athletes with an opportunity to put on a clinic for younger children. Sports teams and spirit squads can all go into elementary schools and provide the children with solid fundamentals regarding their sport. Such mentoring experiences are a valuable precursor to adult citizenship activities.



• Encourage athletes to help out in the community by volunteering for those in need. Senior citizens always need help with yard work and other house maintenance chores. Also, there are a variety of non-profit organizations that can always use help. Perhaps the coach can make such an activity part of the obligation of playing for that particular team.

Partner with the local print and/or electronic media to begin a "Sportsman/woman of the Month." Ask the media to donate the time/space, and to sell advertising to generate profit on their contribution. Contact local businesses to sponsor an appropriate recognition (for example a plaque), but nothing in violation of any pertinent rules governing amateur athletes.

This activity is designed to highlight an athlete's spirit of citizenship and sportsmanship and share it with the public. For the print medium, the athlete's photo can be published along with a short summary of his/her citizenship accomplishments. Nominations for this honor can be sought through notices in the media. For the electronic media, a radio interview or Public Service Announcement (PSA) on television may be appropriate.

Another great idea is to initiate a local public service announcement campaign to promote random acts of citizenship. Those are acts that make a community a better place in which to live and work. In one ad, for example, the focus can be on volunteer opportunities available in the community. Another ad could focus on a specific act of citizenship performed by a member of the community.

A "Citizenship Spotlight" could also be orchestrated and is similar to the previous two examples. However, this feature would focus on groups, individuals other than athletes who illustrate the core values of citizenship. You can expand on this by promoting the values of citizenship as embraced by the CTSA (reference the CTSA home page of this Website).

Ideas are endless when trying to determine how best to promote your cause with the media. But all demonstrate real, living examples of people and groups doing acts of citizenship in your community.

Working with Schools

Interest the school community in sponsoring a district-wide essay competition on citizenship, with students answering the question, "What Citizenship Means To Me." Offer to recruit a panel of judges (educators, civic leaders, and business professionals) to evaluate the entries. Ask local newspapers to consider publishing the winning entries. Again, contact local businesses to contribute a prize (U.S. savings bonds, for example) to essay contest winners.

Working with Community-based Organizations

Contact the leaders of civic and religious organizations and request an opportunity to speak to their membership about your local Citizenship Team efforts and the CTSA national citizenship agenda. Your goal is to recruit each organization so they, too, will embrace one aspect of the values of citizenship and help the promotion of your efforts through their normal activities in the community.

For example, promotion of non-violence might be a value that your community's collective group of religious organizations would embrace. Or, you can help recruit high school volunteers to assist in the efforts of the local chapters of Lion's or Rotary. Each activity helps build partnerships and gives groups much needed help while students are involved in real, live citizenship "laboratories."

Summary

Use your imagination and personal connections to generate community-specific projects that raise the consciousness about the importance of citizenship. The key to the successes of these efforts it to network: to harness the talents and resources of existing groups and other entities to help address their needs. Your success is fostering the cause of citizenship in your community.