Read the text of Seb Coe’s video introduction to Get Set for educators.
The vision we took to Singapore couldn’t have been clearer, and that was to put young people at the heart of the Games.
That was our pledge, and it was very demonstrable in Singapore because of course we were joined by 30 young people from schools in East London that were going to be most impacted by the Games.
We have young people hard-wired into our organisation. We wanted an education programme and the use of young people throughout the country.
One of the visions we took to Singapore was also very clear, and that was to change attitudes: to change attitudes to sport, to change attitudes to participation, to change attitudes to the way that a host city should be delivering a Games within a sustainable community, to change attitudes through the Paralympic movement, to public attitudes towards disability.
And one of the things that I really take very seriously in all this, given that teachers were the bedrock of every bit of inspiration for me to take up the sport that I took up and then to use that sport to self explore other areas of my life, is to make sure that education is not just seen as something that is important for the four years of this Olympic project, but that it actually leaves a legacy of changed attitude once we’ve got to 2012 and then on beyond.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founding father of the Olympic Movement, was very clear when he mapped that seamless path between sport, education and culture.
He was right 120 years ago, and he’s right today. In fact, I think, had he still been around, he might have extended that pathway into sustainability. And for us to use in our educational programme the Values of the Olympic Movement – friendship, respect, courage, determination, excellence – all the things that we know young people really rise to: we do need educational establishments, schools, further education colleges and higher education institutions to really come on board and help us, and to encourage young people to drive those Values that are most appropriate to the institution that they live and work and thrive in as a community.
What’s nice about it is that we’re not sitting here throwing down tablets of stone from the centre. What we’re really saying is: you drive those Values that you think are most appropriate to the community that you live in. And that’s the way that we wanted it. We wanted to enable young people rather than be tightly prescriptive about what they have to do to derive those Values.
What we want to do is to make this an enjoyable process, so the materials that will be available on the website are materials for guidance, they are sites of expertise, they are all sorts of things. But we want them to be at the cornerstone of the thinking, but not uniquely what they have to use. They can almost bridge head out of any number of those opportunities.
My message is really simple. Please, please, be a part of this. I know the impact that you have made, historically, for so long in the lives of young people. Stay with us through until 2012, and actually, if I may say so, I think it only really starts in 2012, it doesn’t end.
