Timothy P. Shriver is the Chairman of Special Olympics. In that capacity, he serves 2.8 million Special Olympics athletes in more than 180 countries. He has helped transform Special Olympics into a movement that focuses on acceptance, inclusion, and respect for individuals with intellectual disabilities in all corners of the globe.
Josh: While the winter Olympics in Vancouver has just come to an end, the US Special Olympics are gearing up to begin in Nebraska this July. It appears Olympic fever is still in the air. If you were to try your luck in an Olympic competition, what do you think your sport would be?
Tim: I have to exercise a huge amount of imagination to see myself in the Olympics, that level of athletic ability was not the gift I was given, but I think I would try them all! It’s hard to imagine a sport that at some level doesn’t strike me as being a blast, so I’d take all of them!
Josh: I guess that’s why we all love the Olympics, there’s no shortage of thrill. Before your time at the Special Olympics, you served as a leading educator on social issues such as substance abuse and teen pregnancy. How did this help you prepare for your success in carrying out your agenda at the Special Olympics?
Tim: What I learned in education was that the most important things kids are looking for is someone to believe in them; not to be stigmatized or marginalized by the expectations of negative outcomes. Kids taught me that while they need a good English teacher, they really need someone who is good at listening to them and believing in them.
That fundamental lesson has been what I’ve tried to bring to the Special Olympics- we don’t want pity, we don’t sympathy, and we don’t really want charity in the traditional sense. We want a world of empowerment; a culture where every gift is valued and recognized. We want our athletes to be treated as the leaders they are. The secret to the movement is the athletes, they are the inspiration, the people that are recruiting the volunteers, inspiring fans, encouraging donors and challenging policy makers and educators to be more sensitive to and respectful of the diversity of human giftedness.
If you don’t understand that the human spirit knows no boundaries, come to the Special Olympics and we will teach you.
Josh: I recently read that 52% of Special Olympics athletes are employed as opposed to just 10% of the intellectually disabled community. Can you give us an idea of how the Special Olympics are pushing these athletes outside of sports and competition and more in the real world?
Tim: I think the most important thing that sport does is enable people to adopt an identity of skill and gift. Participants in the Special Olympics are athletes. As Loretta Clayborn famously said, “I may be a person with an intellectual disability, but I am an athlete.” She didn’t say simply “I do a sport”. An athlete is someone who achieves something, someone who scores goals, breaks times, wins races.
It’s in those moments when this pervasive stigma that tragically dominates the lives of so many of our athletes is cast off. The athlete crosses the line onto the court and it’s as though there’s a transcendent change. That transformation unleashes within them a sense in which they can do more things. They can be confident, popular, successful; they can be contributors and skillful members of a community.
Those are the factors that are so important to employment. They’re important to social success, to relationships, to community living and they have been routinely denied to our population. At a core level, learning self confidence, social skills and developing a community of people who can help you--those are the keys to a job. Those keys are hard to find, but our athletes find them all.
Josh: One of the great trends we are seeing is the expansion of the Special Olympics around the globe. The Case Foundation has partnered with the Special Olympics to help build its international programs. How have you been received around the world; can you give us an idea of the international impact of the Special Olympics?
Tim: The truth is we wouldn’t be where we are without the Case Foundation. Steve and Jean Case believed in us before we could believe in ourselves. We had a vision for growing around the world, but we didn’t know how to do it and we certainly didn’t have the resources. But somehow they knew that we would figure it out. I can’t imagine a philanthropic gift that created greater leverage and greater change than theirs to us.
We only knew that there were half a million or so athletes, yet we knew there were 190 to 225 million people with intellectual disabilities, most living in the developing world. Most were subjected to terrible prejudice with no chance at a fulfilling life. We knew we needed to grow dramatically and quickly, and Steve and Jean said go for it, here’s the resources. The result is over 2.5 million new athletes in the last decades, most coming from India and China, from the poorest communities, in areas where age old stigmas persist.
If you look at a case study like India, the numbers are staggering. They are mostly the rural poor; children having their first real sports experience, their first healthy experience, their first community program. And that’s just one country. It doesn’t tell the story of the small programs started in rural Uganda or in Afghanistan or in Caracas, Venezuela. All over the world, when asked, people will rise to the challenge.
My vision is that every school system in the world will include a Special Olympics experience as part of its developmental program, as a volunteer opportunity, as a friendship development opportunity, an opportunity to learn to overcome the prejudice against difference and learn to understand the universality of human giftedness all over the world.
Josh: I think a lot of people realize how much work there really is to be done. What can we, the average citizens do to help give back to this community?
Tim: Well, in our movement there’s a number of ways to do that. The best thing to do is join a unified sports team with people with intellectual disabilities. Also, we’re always looking for people to donate, our workforce is 99% volunteer but we need the other one percent to be bigger and stronger if we’re going to grow in numbers around the world. We’re asking people to make contributions outside of our programs, to join programs like Best Buddies which create social networks for our population, and to work hard to eliminate discrimination everywhere. We’re also asking people to help us with sensitizing others around the use of language, to join us on March 3rd as we spread the word to end the r-word.
Josh: You send a very powerful message. Tim, you are also a leader in the world of service and civic engagement; a large area of focus for the Case Foundation. You were involved in Service Nation, which led to the passage of the landmark legislation, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. What do you think are the most important elements are of this legislation and what makes it stand apart from other past service initiatives?
Tim: It’s the geometric size of the growth and the real investment in expanding service which makes this legislation great. We still have to look to governors, senators and presidents to focus the work of service organizations around some of the enduring problems in our country. We still have tremendous substance abuse problems in our urban and suburban communities, we still have great dropout problems in education, and still have significant environmental problems in our parks, and in our rivers and streams and coastlands.
I would love to see a day when public officials marshal the armies of service in pursuit of solving significant and pressing social challenges. It’s not just enough to ask people to serve; I think it’s better to ask people to serve in pursuit of a mission. Service has become a way of expressing one’s love of country, but also ones willingness to serve a cause, to make a difference, and to have an impact. That sometimes needs a call to action, which this legislation provides. Young people today are looking for this.
You see this in response to crises like Haiti, where people are instantly ready to go. They’re ready to go in part because there’s a problem to be solved. They want to join a cause bigger than themselves and serve in a way that allows them to express their commitment to helping others and making the world a better place. We still have work to do in the rhetoric of service, and in the policy around service, to take some of the work that’s gone into the Edward F. Kennedy Serve America Act and to convert it into a real army of people focused on solving problems.
Photo by Special Olympics.
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MDS11: The Importance of the Next Generation with Jean Case
