Paralympics Ireland has produced a powerful new awareness and fundraising campaign, ‘More Than Sport’, to help get our Paralympic athletes to Rio. It is one of the most inspiring sporting or perhaps any other campaigns you will have the privilege to see this year.
‘More than Sport’ is a massive push by Paralympics Ireland to raise vital and necessary funds for the road to Rio 2016, which will supplement recent Government funding that was allocated towards the cost of the Games and the Performance Programme.
Speaking to Sport for Business at an event in London last month Paralympics Ireland CEO Liam Harbison revealed that “It costs €5,000 to send an athlete to Rio. With €10,000 we can build in the level of coaching and scientific back up that can turn extraordinary individuals into extraordinary champions.”
This campaign was launched as a panel of 56 potential Rio bound athletes was announced. The success of the team in London helped to change peoples perception of of how to define ability and disability.
The phrase that has emerged is to talk of people with different ability. Different in the case of the Paralympics really means extraordinary. Swimmer Ellen Keane used to pull her sleeve down to hide the fact that she is missing the lower limb on her left arm. The heart and spirit she beams when you meet her or see her in action in the pool makes old concepts of disability seem as wholly out of place as they always were, and are now increasingly seen to be.
This campaign is about moving the public perception on another level.
In the words of the campaign literature it highlights that “our Paralympic athletes are more than elite athletes. They are elite athletes who have achieved and succeeded against all the odds. They are athletes who have faced adversity, and won. They are athletes who have often been told they can’t, to then go on and prove that in fact, they can, and will.”
The Paralympics as a whole and the athletes themselves are so much more than sport and this campaign, brought to you through unique and captivating videos and behind the scenes interviews with the stars gives us a glimpse into the essence of ‘more’ – more than training, more than determination, more than medals, more than sport.
‘More Than Sport’ itself will be the vessel through which athletes’ own stories will be told over the coming months. In essence, it will be a behind-the-scenes look into life as an elite Irish athlete, their training, their dedication and above all, what motivates them.
It is hoped that awareness built from the ‘More Than Sport’ campaign will help to push support towards the fundraising element, which will ask members of the public to get behind the athletes by texting PARA to 50300 to donate €4.
Speaking about the campaign, CEO of Paralympics Ireland, Liam Harbison stated: “More Than Sport is a new awareness and fundraising initiative we’ve launched this year as we prepare for the Rio 2016 Games”
“It’s an extremely exciting and inspirational campaign and we hope that the public will also get behind the text fundraising element of the campaign too in the coming months.”
“You’re not less, you’re more is the message in this great video, created by Atomic Sport. It will be followed up by five individual videos with athletes in the run up to the Rio Games in September.
Take the time to watch, reset your perspective on what is possible and donate to this inspiring campaign.
