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Rethinking active cities in the Middle-East
34 Plays1 year ago
Active lifestyle seems to be compromised in some countries of the Middle-East. In this conversation with Hisham Shehabi, we discuss how important it is for the region to ensure the population is enabled to practice sports.
We explored how some countries in the region have tackled public health issues through clear strategies and programs aimed at improving people’s lifestyle; a vision of the future where cities are active - i.e. all sectors move as a daily routine and facilities are accessible for all - and all is data-driven and driven by the community - i.e. multiple groups are responsible and use various channels of communications. Elite and mass participation will be integrated.
Check out our website score-sport.com and our LinkedIn page, to find more information about what we do. Please rate, comment and share, if you feel like it.
This episode was recorded in November 2023.
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Transcript
Introduction: The Role of Sports in Society
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to SCORE Podcast.
00:00:12
Speaker
In this show, we discuss the responsibility of sports for and within society.
00:00:17
Speaker
What impact should sport have on our world?
00:00:19
Speaker
Can sport do more?
00:00:20
Speaker
Who is responsible?
00:00:21
Speaker
To address these questions, we focus on possible solutions and desired scenarios.
00:00:26
Speaker
We break our discussion down in four parts.
00:00:29
Speaker
First, we describe the current situation.
00:00:31
Speaker
Second, we draw the ideal future scenario.
00:00:34
Speaker
Third, we plan how to reach this future.
00:00:36
Speaker
And then, we call for action.
00:00:38
Speaker
And we are your hosts today, Donata Teddia and Alexandra Osasha Volkova.
Middle East Cities and Physical Activity
00:00:53
Speaker
Today we discuss the responsibility of the cities in making their populations physically more active and therefore healthier.
00:01:01
Speaker
Specifically, we will focus on the Middle East, a region with a fast-growing interest in sports and sport events.
00:01:07
Speaker
And for this conversation, we invited Hisham Shehabi, who is connecting from Washington, D.C.
00:01:13
Speaker
Welcome, Hisham, to SCORE podcast.
00:01:15
Speaker
Thank you, Sasha.
00:01:16
Speaker
Thank you, Donata.
00:01:17
Speaker
Lovely to be here with you.
00:01:19
Speaker
Hisham is founder and chief operating officer of Next Sports, an agency focusing on digital innovations in sports.
00:01:26
Speaker
Prior to starting his own company, Hisham worked for the International Olympic Committee in various roles.
00:01:31
Speaker
And before that, he also worked for the Bahrain Olympic Committee and Bahrain Economic Development Board.
00:01:37
Speaker
Hisham is also an Olympian.
00:01:39
Speaker
In 2004, he swam for the Bahrain National Team at the Athens Olympics.
00:01:45
Speaker
And we are very happy to have you with us today, Hisham.
00:01:47
Speaker
And with this being said, I suggest we start our conversation.
Urban Development and Sports Participation
00:01:56
Speaker
Hisham, let's establish a common ground.
00:01:59
Speaker
We know that cities in the Middle East have been growing rapidly over the past few decades, and recent urban infrastructure developments make cities less convenient for pedestrians and discourage people from walking around.
00:02:12
Speaker
Active lifestyle seems to be compromised in the region.
00:02:16
Speaker
At the same time, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other countries are hosting a lot of international sports events and therefore building giant sports facilities.
00:02:27
Speaker
How do you feel about this?
00:02:31
Speaker
It's connected to the historical development of the region, which about 70 to 100 years ago discovered oil for the first time.
00:02:42
Speaker
And this led to a huge economic development of the region.
00:02:47
Speaker
which put money into citizens' pockets.
00:02:50
Speaker
And whereas they used to live in smaller and more central and better urbanly planned locations, they moved out into bigger houses and that created the development that you see in the region.
00:03:06
Speaker
So a lot of the people of these countries that you mentioned actually live outside
00:03:12
Speaker
of the center.
00:03:13
Speaker
And that didn't used to be the case.
00:03:15
Speaker
So whereas they used to live in smaller communities with great urban spaces where they could just be physically active by the nature of the day-to-day activities, today they need to seek out those physical activities by driving to locations, driving to destinations, to programs that are not within their area.
00:03:35
Speaker
So
00:03:37
Speaker
I think I'm glad to see that there's a big focus on sports.
00:03:42
Speaker
In my opinion, there's maybe too much of a focus on the elite sports side, on attracting events, on attracting clubs and teams from abroad.
00:03:54
Speaker
Whereas there should be a balance on focusing on lifestyles, on sports participation, grassroots, which as we all know in sports is one of the main drivers for elite performance is to have actually the right sports pyramid, right?
00:04:08
Speaker
So again, I'm encouraged, but at the same time, I believe there could be a better balanced truck with the focus on grassroots sports.
00:04:19
Speaker
So in a nutshell, where do we stand with the physical activities of citizens now?
Health Challenges and Sedentary Lifestyles
00:04:24
Speaker
Like what do people do there daily or weekly to be healthy and active?
00:04:29
Speaker
So if you look at any of the global organizations that cover the region, so like the World Health Organization, for example, all of the indications are that physical activity is very low in the region.
00:04:43
Speaker
And the result of this is a high level of non-communicable diseases.
00:04:50
Speaker
So diabetes actually is, so seven out of the top 10 countries in the world are actually in the Middle East.
00:04:59
Speaker
And this is due to, again, what I mentioned before, whereas people used to have activity as part of their day today, now it is not.
00:05:09
Speaker
And at the same time, you had a change in the diet.
00:05:12
Speaker
for many of these societies which has led to the diabetes pandemic that is there.
00:05:19
Speaker
So today you'll find everything is a personal effort.
00:05:25
Speaker
It doesn't come naturally to go into sports and to do physical activity on a daily basis.
00:05:30
Speaker
It happens outside and usually far away from where you actually spend your day, going to work and spending time with family.
00:05:39
Speaker
Usually sports is not within that physical space.
00:05:42
Speaker
You need to actually go beyond that.
00:05:44
Speaker
So you see, I wouldn't call it like a fad per se, but every few years there's a specific sport that takes hold.
00:05:51
Speaker
And I can speak from my country, Bahrain, where over the years I volunteered at a lot of sports events.
00:05:58
Speaker
organizing grassroots running events, triathlon events, and multi-sports events.
00:06:03
Speaker
Running and triathlon were really growing quite a lot, I would say, in the last 10 years, leading up to the pandemic.
00:06:10
Speaker
Since then, paddle,
00:06:13
Speaker
which is a racket sport, has taken hold and grown exponentially.
00:06:19
Speaker
And now you see also a supply that oversaturated the market in Bahrain specifically, even though in other countries it seems to be catching up because people found it to be a great place to hang out.
00:06:33
Speaker
So it was a good social setting.
00:06:35
Speaker
It was a good place for friends to meet up outside of like...
00:06:43
Speaker
the cinema or going out to restaurants or going out.
00:06:46
Speaker
And it's also indoors, no paddle sports.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:06:49
Speaker
You have both actually.
00:06:50
Speaker
You have a lot of outdoor paddle courts as well.
00:06:53
Speaker
And I think just commenting on that specifically, the social aspect is very important to consider because unlike many other regions in the world, youth in the region live in their parents' homes until they are married.
00:07:08
Speaker
And so you have people leading up to their 30s, maybe sometimes even older, that are living at home, meaning that they don't have spaces really to hang out with their friends as much, which means they always need to go out to hang out.
00:07:21
Speaker
So these used to be shisha bars like hookah.
00:07:25
Speaker
So they go to smoke, play cards, and so on, and board games and watch TV, some specific like football leagues in Europe.
00:07:35
Speaker
But now these spaces have emerged where you have another place to hang out as a youth.
00:07:40
Speaker
And so that's why I think there is a lot of appetite for this right now.
00:07:45
Speaker
So Hisham, how have these spaces emerged?
00:07:49
Speaker
Is it the cities doing something to promote physical activity for the citizens?
00:07:55
Speaker
No, typically the cities have not taken on a leadership role.
00:08:00
Speaker
Cities are not empowered.
00:08:02
Speaker
In places like Bahrain, at least, you have more like a central government and the ministries are the ones that are pushing things.
00:08:09
Speaker
Now, the physical activity agenda...
00:08:12
Speaker
or portfolio is not really owned by any one single ministry.
00:08:17
Speaker
So that makes it difficult to then hold anybody accountable for it.
00:08:21
Speaker
So with the case of paddle or with running and triathlon, as I mentioned earlier, it's community led.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's a group of people usually that, uh,
00:08:32
Speaker
that assemble, that organize events, that start to formalize a structure.
00:08:38
Speaker
And then that provides the impetus for launching and getting other people excited.
00:08:44
Speaker
In other countries, now you see that being more centralized within government.
00:08:48
Speaker
And you see provinces, you see emirates.
00:08:51
Speaker
We can talk about Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the activities they do.
00:08:53
Speaker
You see cities in Saudi also taking that on.
00:08:57
Speaker
So now I think the city is waking up
00:09:00
Speaker
to the responsibility that they need to do.
00:09:03
Speaker
But it really is driven by, I would say, central government and more like the ministries at
Community Efforts and Government Roles
00:09:08
Speaker
the national level.
00:09:12
Speaker
That's very interesting.
00:09:13
Speaker
But do you know of any initiatives from different cities or state governments as well to promote physical activity within their cities?
00:09:23
Speaker
Can you give us some examples maybe that exist now or even some examples from all over the world that you could kind of look up to?
00:09:32
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah.
00:09:33
Speaker
So in the last few years, there's been a few countries that have started their national sports day.
00:09:40
Speaker
So Bahrain is one of them, and they did it, I think it's around February of every year.
00:09:46
Speaker
Now, different countries in the region also do that.
00:09:49
Speaker
There's quite a few of them.
00:09:50
Speaker
And this usually is a day where all of society is coming together to be active, yeah, and to talk about sports and to be active in sports.
00:09:59
Speaker
And what's interesting about this day specifically is because it's a national sports day, it means the private sector companies, public sector companies all take part.
00:10:10
Speaker
They all organize events for their staff.
00:10:13
Speaker
And again, staff means usually parents, means young families.
00:10:17
Speaker
And this creates the culture of sports, you know.
00:10:19
Speaker
So...
00:10:21
Speaker
That's, I would say, a beneficial platform.
00:10:25
Speaker
But in my opinion, it's not used as like there's no real buildup towards it and like a 365 view on how we use that platform.
00:10:33
Speaker
But more it's about the day itself and celebrating it, which is fine.
00:10:38
Speaker
I think there just needs to be a bit more connected information.
00:10:41
Speaker
connection between that platform and others.
00:10:44
Speaker
In Abu Dhabi, you have as well, like a recent platform that was launched called Abu Dhabi 360, which is about getting people active, as it sounds, all days of the year.
00:10:54
Speaker
And it ties in with Abu Dhabi wanting to be one of the leading cities in the world for
00:11:00
Speaker
livability and being active and sustainable and family friendly.
00:11:05
Speaker
So this was driven by the Abu Dhabi Sports Council, but in direct contact with and support of the central government.
00:11:15
Speaker
And which initiatives from all around the world, I don't know, Europeans or Americans, etc., would you consider as a reference for you for the Middle East countries?
00:11:27
Speaker
Are you aware of any projects that you would say that that's interesting, that could be easily implemented at our place?
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think for the Middle East, there's always an interest in celebrity-led type of activities and initiatives.
00:11:45
Speaker
Anything that is brought, quote-unquote, from abroad, especially like the West, is held in high regard.
00:11:54
Speaker
That used to be the trend, you know.
00:11:56
Speaker
But nowadays, I believe that there is an understanding of
00:12:03
Speaker
within the society of the importance of physical activity.
00:12:07
Speaker
This was maybe heightened because of COVID.
00:12:11
Speaker
People understood how important it was to be physically active.
00:12:14
Speaker
They found time and spaces to do so because everybody had to be outside and away from each other in terms of distance.
00:12:22
Speaker
This led to people being more conscious about the importance of being physically active.
00:12:31
Speaker
I can't point out specific initiatives from a global sense, but those are some of the characteristics, I would say, that really would work in the Middle East.
00:12:43
Speaker
Hisham, I would like to go back to the idea of community-led initiatives and also the health situation.
00:12:50
Speaker
You are also co-founder of Diabetes.bh, a portal that works with education in the prevention of management of diabetes and provides support to the network of diabetes community.
00:13:00
Speaker
So with your experience in this field, what is the situation with this disease now?
00:13:06
Speaker
Is it still growing?
00:13:07
Speaker
And what are the solutions the states offer to the citizens?
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:13
Speaker
It's still growing.
00:13:15
Speaker
One of the main reasons we actually launched this project was initially we wanted to focus on developing an initiative to include blind people in society a bit more.
00:13:30
Speaker
Once we dug into the cause of blindness, we realized that diabetic retinopathy
00:13:37
Speaker
was one of the leading causes of blindness around the world, but specifically in the region.
00:13:42
Speaker
That's impressive.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:45
Speaker
That's really impressive.
00:13:47
Speaker
Yeah, it was quite eye-opening, excuse the pun there, but we realized that diabetes was something we needed to research a bit more before launching any initiative at the time.
00:14:00
Speaker
And so we dug in and we realized there was no stats.
00:14:03
Speaker
There was no transparency around data.
00:14:06
Speaker
And we started to talk to so many stakeholders, including the Bahrain Diabetes Society at the time, and nobody seemed to have a good handle on the numbers.
00:14:15
Speaker
So we did our own research, and we tapped into global resources.
00:14:20
Speaker
And basically, 70% of people who have diabetes in Bahrain at the time did not know they have diabetes.
00:14:29
Speaker
And that's a number which is three out of 10.
00:14:33
Speaker
So you have about one fifth of the population that has diabetes and doesn't know it.
00:14:38
Speaker
So it's a huge problem.
00:14:40
Speaker
And it was not being actively and I would say proactively addressed by government.
00:14:47
Speaker
It's always like treatment rather than prevention.
00:14:50
Speaker
And sports, I believe, is a very low-cost tool for prevention of such diseases and a disease that is very expensive for government, especially in a place like Bahrain and many countries in the Middle East where the government takes on the responsibility of the health care of its citizens fully.
00:15:09
Speaker
You would think it's a no-brainer, right?
00:15:11
Speaker
But that's not the case.
00:15:13
Speaker
Sports is not seen as that tool.
00:15:15
Speaker
And with diabetes itself, it's more...
00:15:19
Speaker
And this is where the connection with the Middle East happens with the global movement for these initiatives is that they rely on resources from the International Diabetes Federation, for example, to talk about World Diabetes Day on November 14 every year.
00:15:34
Speaker
But there's no 365 plan around that.
00:15:37
Speaker
There's no integrative coordination between government ministries on how to deal with and prevent diabetes.
00:15:44
Speaker
So again, it's more like checking boxes, like, okay, we're doing this and we show up on the International Diabetes Federation's website as doing that blue circle on November 14 every year, but there's nothing really substantial beyond that.
00:16:00
Speaker
So if there is nothing substantial around that, is the private sector more involved?
00:16:05
Speaker
Is there any partnership, public-private sector that is being established or not at all?
00:16:11
Speaker
Or like seeing this connection between doing sports or using sports as a prevention tool?
00:16:18
Speaker
Yeah, like I said, there is awareness.
00:16:21
Speaker
Corporations are increasingly wanting to retain their employees.
00:16:26
Speaker
They realize like a holistic lifestyle is how to do that and providing ways for them to be active is a way to do that as well.
00:16:32
Speaker
There's a lot of corporate leagues that come out, a lot of companies that sponsor athletes, for example, which is growing, you know, and it's a growing trend, I would say.
00:16:43
Speaker
But the private sector seems to follow the lead of government in the sense that they will associate with initiatives that they know will position themselves in better regard with government.
00:16:56
Speaker
So we have something in the region which I haven't seen in many places in the world called patronage.
00:17:04
Speaker
which lends basically the name of a person, usually a royal person or somebody of like a distinguished profile from society to an event or to an initiative.
00:17:16
Speaker
And there is this, I think the private sector knows that that's how you get seen.
00:17:22
Speaker
And so they associate themselves with initiatives that are already under the patronage of people that they want to impress or people they want to do business with.
00:17:32
Speaker
or people they want to have influence with, you know, so that's how private sector responds.
00:17:38
Speaker
And it's, that's kind of like a behavior in the Middle East that, again, I have not seen in many other places.
00:17:46
Speaker
Moving a little bit from that subject, but staying within the overall theme, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are hosting major sport events recently or will host, including mass participations like marathons and big events like World Cups or Asian Games.
00:18:03
Speaker
How do these events...
00:18:05
Speaker
in your opinion, affect the local population in terms of like physical activity?
00:18:09
Speaker
Are there any impact measuring tools or mechanisms implemented by the governments or cities that would allow them to monitor the impact or effect of these events?
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good point and something that has been negatively perceived, I think, by the international community for a long time, especially in the last few years as more and more events are coming.
Impact of Major Sports Events
00:18:32
Speaker
So in Saudi, I know specifically that there is a program under Vision 2030 called Quality of Life Program.
00:18:40
Speaker
And this Quality of Life Program is, as it sounds, about improving the quality of life of citizens and residents.
00:18:47
Speaker
And one of those is sports and one of those is entertainment.
00:18:51
Speaker
And on the sports side, they want to provide more and more opportunities to engage as a fan, as an audience with these types of events.
00:19:00
Speaker
You don't need to go to Europe to see the best in the world.
00:19:02
Speaker
You can actually see it in your hometown.
00:19:05
Speaker
And on the flip side of the coin, to get more active.
00:19:08
Speaker
And once you see them, you believe you can act in that way.
00:19:12
Speaker
So this is the, let's say the philosophy
00:19:15
Speaker
Now, who is in charge of making that connection is really the sports sector.
00:19:19
Speaker
The sports sector led by the Ministry of Sports, the Saudi Olympic Committee, and then, as we all know, the national federations.
00:19:26
Speaker
For each sport, are in charge of the whole sports pyramid.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yes, they need to bring medals, but they need to be the ones connecting all of these major events and private actors, let's say, coming in to all of the grassroots that need to be developed.
00:19:39
Speaker
So you have some federations that do it well, but most of them just don't have the capacity.
00:19:44
Speaker
to do that.
00:19:45
Speaker
And if you look at their operational KPIs, which is something that is done once a year, the national federations are not evaluated on that metric specifically.
00:19:54
Speaker
They're not evaluated on the number of people that they get into the lower part of the pyramid.
00:20:00
Speaker
So again, it's not like...
00:20:02
Speaker
There's a stick in place yet for this type of metric, but indeed it is tracked by government, by this quality of life program.
00:20:10
Speaker
So on a quarterly basis, they do have the percentage of the population that takes part in two activities a week of 30 minutes at least.
00:20:20
Speaker
And so that has been increasing significantly.
00:20:22
Speaker
And obviously that's
00:20:24
Speaker
Part of it is driving participation up, but part of it is the fact that they are now relaxing regulations and maybe the cultural view to women participating.
00:20:35
Speaker
So that's been another reason there's been a spike, let's say, in the number of active participants.
00:20:42
Speaker
That's actually good news.
00:20:43
Speaker
I think it is pretty clear what's going on today, right, Donata?
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, indeed.
00:20:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:51
Speaker
And now I think it's time to jump to the second part of our conversation, the desired future.
00:21:03
Speaker
Hisham, where have you brought us to?
00:21:06
Speaker
Can you describe to us your ideal future?
00:21:10
Speaker
So the Middle East has a very young population.
00:21:15
Speaker
Many of the countries have a pear-shaped demographic pyramid.
00:21:22
Speaker
Today, there's a lower number of aged people, whereas the, let's say, the people between 20 and 50 will grow to be the old people in the next 20 years.
00:21:34
Speaker
So for me, the ideal future is not too far from now.
00:21:37
Speaker
It's more like...
00:21:39
Speaker
existential situation because if we don't get this group of people to be healthy in the coming 20 years then these governments and these people will have a very bad quality of life towards the end of their life so my ideal future is one where this group of people
00:21:58
Speaker
It becomes empowered, proactive around physical activity.
00:22:03
Speaker
And I don't say sports.
00:22:05
Speaker
I think it's important to make that distinction because people feel like sports is sometimes not accessible, whereas physical activity should be just a part of how you do your day.
00:22:14
Speaker
It shouldn't be something you need to go out of your day to do.
00:22:17
Speaker
Correct.
00:22:17
Speaker
Very, very important point here.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:22:21
Speaker
Because if people feel it's approachable, it's achievable, it's something that I can do and I don't need to have like huge muscles for, I think it makes it more likely that we'll get more and more people to do this.
00:22:35
Speaker
So that is maybe not an ideal future per se, but to explain to you kind of like the ticking time bomb we have in front of us in the Middle East.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah, I would stop there.
00:22:50
Speaker
It's fine.
00:22:51
Speaker
Just describe for us, what does it mean an active city in this future of yours?
00:22:57
Speaker
What do you see around?
00:22:59
Speaker
So an active city is one where all segments of population are moving as part of their daily routine, that sports facilities are within reach, are accessible and affordable to all, and that the
00:23:21
Speaker
percentage of the population that is dealing with obesity or non-communicable diseases or all the, let's say, the threats from having obesity, like heart failure and blood pressure and so on, that these are reduced significantly.
00:23:37
Speaker
So this is the ideal state, I think, for me, of an active city.
00:23:42
Speaker
It is one driven by data.
00:23:43
Speaker
It's one driven by KPIs that we can track.
00:23:47
Speaker
And those are things that I think today we have the tools for.
00:23:52
Speaker
And we just need to make sure that we're building systems, building facilities, building programs that have data at the center of them, because that's how we can push this forward.
00:24:04
Speaker
So a city driven by data, but who drives data?
00:24:08
Speaker
Who is leading these initiatives?
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think you need to have, again, like that community-led peace is very important.
00:24:19
Speaker
The Middle East is an Islamic region.
00:24:22
Speaker
And with Islam comes a lot of, let's say, institutions.
00:24:27
Speaker
So you have your mosques, you have your...
00:24:30
Speaker
Ma'tems for the Shia population.
00:24:34
Speaker
All of them are places of congregation that have in them an opportunity to influence.
00:24:43
Speaker
For example, there are campaigns that are Ramadan related.
00:24:47
Speaker
Ramadan is a period of fasting every year, which talk about different themes every year.
00:24:51
Speaker
Sometimes it's about eating less or wasting less food.
00:24:56
Speaker
And sometimes it's about connecting with neighbors or connecting with your community.
00:25:00
Speaker
And I think there is space to push messages about being healthy and being active as well.
00:25:09
Speaker
I believe it's not one group that needs to drive this.
00:25:12
Speaker
It needs to be many different instruments that impact the daily life of people.
00:25:17
Speaker
And some people are religious, some people are not.
00:25:19
Speaker
So any tool we have, and I'll give you an example here with one of the religious periods of the year called Muharram, which is more like celebrated religion.
00:25:29
Speaker
or like remembered, because it's not really a celebration, it's a mourning period for the Shia population.
00:25:35
Speaker
They congregate at these matams for a period of about 12 days, where they eat a lot of food.
00:25:45
Speaker
There's lunch always, there's snacks, and there's dinners.
00:25:49
Speaker
And usually all of this food is very bad in terms of a diet.
00:25:54
Speaker
It's very fatty, oily, sugary, sodas, soft drinks, etc.
00:26:00
Speaker
So starting and these are all provided by central kitchens.
00:26:04
Speaker
So if you could influence these kitchens to say you are impacting thousands, tens of thousands of people on the way they eat and they perceive a good meal is, then these are kind of instruments we could use.
00:26:17
Speaker
So I think there are many levers that need to be unplugged here.
00:26:22
Speaker
So diet being one, physical activity being another, and then sports being another.
00:26:27
Speaker
So ideally, you'd have some sort of connection between the three.
00:26:35
Speaker
I still want to bring you back to the dreaming part, dreaming about our ideal future.
00:26:40
Speaker
What do you think should be urbanistic solutions in your, let's call it ideal city?
00:26:45
Speaker
So how do you see it, especially considering that the region is very hot.
00:26:50
Speaker
There are months that you, during some certain months, you can't be outside during the day, et cetera.
00:26:55
Speaker
So from urbanistic perspective, how do you see this?
Urban Planning and Physical Activity Integration
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's a very good point.
00:27:01
Speaker
And I think, you know, just an anecdote.
00:27:06
Speaker
So Ramadan happens every year, but changes 11 days forward on the Gregorian calendar because the lunar calendar is shorter.
00:27:16
Speaker
And so a few years ago, Ramadan was happening in July and August in Bahrain.
00:27:21
Speaker
And we were still organizing running events in that period right before breaking fast.
00:27:28
Speaker
So it's 50 degrees outside and you haven't eaten or drank all day, but you still go for a run right before breaking fast.
00:27:35
Speaker
And this was a group of like 50 people who got together to do this.
00:27:39
Speaker
It sounds crazy, but this region is also used to living in this temperature.
00:27:44
Speaker
They're used to being outside, they're used to doing stuff outside.
00:27:47
Speaker
And while there are many hours of the day that are really difficult, there are many hours of the day, even in the hottest months, where people do stuff.
00:27:54
Speaker
And I believe, actually I have seen, a lot of people do stuff when there are spaces for them.
00:27:59
Speaker
So one example is farmers markets.
00:28:02
Speaker
Those have been popping up more and more.
00:28:04
Speaker
And even in hot periods, people go to them.
00:28:07
Speaker
So ideally, from an urban planning perspective, I would love to see the cities that are, or let's say more like the residential areas that are being built, to be built with walking and cycling.
00:28:22
Speaker
and micro mobility in mind.
00:28:25
Speaker
And it seems like some of the new developments are thinking like that.
00:28:29
Speaker
But adding to that also a difficulty for driving cars or parking cars in specific places, something that seems to be the case in Europe, because people are still living in the center, they live in apartment buildings and so on.
00:28:41
Speaker
But in the Middle East, that's not the case.
00:28:44
Speaker
So from an urban planning perspective, I'd love to see more spaces without cars, more spaces where bicycles are the normal mode of transportation.
00:28:54
Speaker
And that it's not weird seeing people on scooters.
00:28:58
Speaker
I mean, the two wheel ones that you stand on, not like a motorcycle type.
00:29:02
Speaker
Not electric, not electric.
00:29:03
Speaker
Well, or electric, one of those.
00:29:08
Speaker
Even electric, you know, whilst being on a scooter, you would not exude any physical, let's say, calories.
00:29:17
Speaker
still getting to the scooter and from the scooter to the next place you would be walking you know which today is done by car so i think again you need to introduce um i would love like the ideal state to be where walking is your 10 000 steps a day or whatever that standard is today to be normal for you to go to
00:29:37
Speaker
your groceries, to visit your family, to go to school, to do your activities after school.
00:29:46
Speaker
All of this needs to integrate the steps that you need to do per day.
00:29:51
Speaker
That's where I would love for the future to be.
00:29:55
Speaker
I witnessed in Qatar when the car parked at the parking next to the shopping mall and then there was a little golf car that would bring people from the parking to the shopping mall, which was like 100 meters path, which was not complex to make by foot.
00:30:11
Speaker
But it's more like a habit, a culture of the car-centric culture there for now.
00:30:17
Speaker
Exactly.
00:30:18
Speaker
Okay, so we talked about talking about physical activity, not sports.
00:30:22
Speaker
So you see people more moving, walking between locations, but what are other solutions that or facilities that would engage or motivate people?
00:30:33
Speaker
How do you see that?
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, there's like, it's a Muslim culture, you know, so again, I think the religious institutions need to get behind this.
00:30:45
Speaker
They need to be supporting the fact that women,
00:30:48
Speaker
get active and that they have more spaces to be active.
00:30:52
Speaker
Today, it's being driven by government, which is trying to decouple itself from religious institutions a little bit to open up.
00:31:00
Speaker
And if you could have spaces for women separately, or times and programs for them specifically, then that would be already a win.
00:31:13
Speaker
Then I believe gyms are prohibitive for a large portion of the population, whilst the region is quite rich.
00:31:22
Speaker
the majority of the population sits in the, I would say, lower middle class or even lower than that, the lower class.
00:31:31
Speaker
And this, if you look at the median range salary or even the average salaries in places like Bahrain, they would not be able to afford
00:31:38
Speaker
a membership at the gym, you know?
00:31:40
Speaker
So one thing I really like seeing, for example, here in Washington, DC is all of these community centers, yeah?
00:31:46
Speaker
Where you have a mix of like senior activities, childcare, swimming pool, gym, fitness place, education area, computer lab, and library all in one place, fully subsidized by the government, yeah?
00:31:59
Speaker
Municipality in this case.
00:32:01
Speaker
So if you had more of those and you have like already...
00:32:05
Speaker
a push by like the Ministry of Health in places like Bahrain, where like there needs to be a certain ratio of doctors per 10,000 people.
00:32:17
Speaker
So if you were able to provide that ratio as well on the sporting side,
00:32:22
Speaker
or the leisure entertainment activity side, then that would be a good push as well.
00:32:27
Speaker
So you need infrastructure, especially with the hot months.
00:32:31
Speaker
You need to be allowing people the opportunity and the option to be indoors.
00:32:35
Speaker
Not everybody wants to run in 50 degrees weather, and that's normal.
00:32:41
Speaker
Let's stay on the infrastructure idea, but let's move to the digital infrastructures or digital solutions.
00:32:49
Speaker
What can be the solutions that help motivate people to move, to get active?
00:32:54
Speaker
Just to be said, Donate and I, we had like the whole brainstorming session about various digital solutions for the Middle East of the future, but we would be curious to hear your ideas.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it touches two main areas.
00:33:11
Speaker
One is, I would call it like content, and one is what I would call discoverability.
00:33:18
Speaker
So content, everybody around the world, but I would say even higher in the Middle East has mobiles.
00:33:26
Speaker
Mobile penetration is above 100% in the Middle East, meaning a lot of people have more than one phone for personal use.
00:33:34
Speaker
And this means they spend a lot of time on social media, on WhatsApp and so on.
00:33:39
Speaker
So you need to have content that is geared towards like sensitizing, if you like, or reminding people that physical activity is fun, it's interesting and give chances for people to share what they have been doing.
00:33:55
Speaker
So I think that piece would be important.
00:33:58
Speaker
And this again is done at the venue level, at the facility level.
00:34:03
Speaker
And the discoverability piece, I think we've lived, all of us around the world, in an age where we've been Netflixed, where we are suggestible to things that we have not typically been exposed to.
00:34:19
Speaker
Because we're open now to seeing the next movie, the next series.
00:34:24
Speaker
And so knowing sometimes what is available around you
00:34:28
Speaker
or activities that are happening around you is not easy, even in places that you live.
00:34:34
Speaker
So if you are able to provide the population the opportunity to discover activities that are happening close to them, whether it's in facilities, sports centers, health centers, libraries, imagine the library next door has a presentation of an Olympian.
00:34:52
Speaker
An Olympian talking about their experience at the Olympics.
00:34:55
Speaker
How did they go about that?
00:34:57
Speaker
You can bring your kids to it.
00:34:58
Speaker
So these are the two areas I think would be interesting and important to focus on.
00:35:03
Speaker
Like how do you ensure that a lot of content is created around people's activities?
00:35:08
Speaker
And then how do you discover activities that are happening around you?
00:35:11
Speaker
Those two areas.
00:35:13
Speaker
So talking about discovering activities, and we are like dreaming here, yeah?
00:35:17
Speaker
Just to remind, would it be like an application with push notifications about events related to sport happening around you and with also showing you the facilities, et cetera?
00:35:28
Speaker
And if so, who should lead this process?
00:35:31
Speaker
Shall it be the city, municipality, community, the state, Ministry of Sport, NOC, et cetera, et cetera?
00:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think in many countries around the world, that would be an issue.
00:35:44
Speaker
In the Middle East, I think it's quite simple because they are like states that have very strong security apparatus, meaning that they are keeping track of and they know where their citizens are at all times.
00:35:57
Speaker
And this is all linked to your personal ID, your national ID.
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:03
Speaker
So because the national ID exists, you can connect it to any number of activities or applications.
00:36:09
Speaker
And so if you had a central entity, and I believe a mix of like the urban planning type of ministry, ministry of health, the ministry of sports,
00:36:21
Speaker
they would be the institutions that I think would need to create such a thing and bring it to scale.
00:36:29
Speaker
Because putting this on the, let's say, shoulders of individual venues would make it difficult.
00:36:36
Speaker
The other way of approaching it is actually having everybody being digitally literate or being able to market digitally in a very good way, which I think actually now, like the youth of the Middle East are very good at.
00:36:48
Speaker
So if you give them the chance, I think the youth could probably, if they were empowered to work with these centers and these activity areas, they would be able to promote it very well.
00:37:01
Speaker
But then to scale that would be a bit difficult.
00:37:03
Speaker
So I think it needs to be government-led centrally.
00:37:08
Speaker
We just had this idea that we wanted to share with you about like, especially that could work for youth to have a bonus system.
00:37:16
Speaker
So if you walk, you register, you get one bonus or one point, let's say.
00:37:20
Speaker
If you've done 30 minutes twice per week and other two points, I'm just tripping here.
00:37:25
Speaker
And then at the end with this, you get discounts.
00:37:28
Speaker
And as you say, there is a lot of governmental presence in healthcare industry as well.
00:37:34
Speaker
So for example, your health insurance gets, you know, gets lower, et cetera.
00:37:38
Speaker
This is how we were dreaming about it before preparing for this episode.
00:37:44
Speaker
Do you have any examples from the world where this has been implemented or have you thought about it within your projects?
00:37:50
Speaker
Because you're doing a lot of projects with the countries there.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah, so Singapore actually has something like this.
00:37:59
Speaker
Not the gamification part, but the national sports ID parts, which also Norway has and Denmark is now considering.
00:38:08
Speaker
So the idea there is that you have this unique identifier as a citizen.
00:38:13
Speaker
that allows you to interact with all of the facilities on the club side, but also the National Sports Federation side.
00:38:22
Speaker
So here you need to make it easy for people to not have to download 17 apps to do the activities they want to do or for their clients
00:38:31
Speaker
that they want their kids to do.
00:38:34
Speaker
So you see that in some countries and in Singapore specifically, a few years ago, they piloted as well a Fitbit.
00:38:42
Speaker
So Fitbit being one of the wearables to, I think it was like a population number of 10,000 or 20,000 people that they wanted to give the Fitbits for free for to see what the impact would be on their daily activity.
00:38:56
Speaker
So once you're able to have that
00:39:00
Speaker
sports ID or connecting your national idea to a sports infrastructure, then you can do a lot of things.
00:39:07
Speaker
And again, that's where I think the data piece is important.
00:39:11
Speaker
One of the projects we're working on at the moment is with the European Commission.
00:39:15
Speaker
where we're looking at what type of technological tools does grassroots sports need to be able to modernize.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, modernize being a big word.
00:39:26
Speaker
But again, there you need to make it very simple for these entities to use the tools.
00:39:33
Speaker
You cannot have coders everywhere.
00:39:36
Speaker
These entities usually are run by volunteers.
00:39:39
Speaker
So anything that can be centralized at the federal, and when I say federal, I mean like
00:39:44
Speaker
a group with many members or many individual associations, then it should be done.
00:39:49
Speaker
So, yeah, I think there's many examples around the world.
00:39:54
Speaker
In the region, you have the opportunity to experiment at a local level in places like Abu Dhabi versus doing it for the whole United Arab Emirates in Bahrain, perhaps in some municipalities, Saudi, same thing.
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:12
Speaker
Hisham, I'm still walking in your ideal future and I'm looking around, I have my phone, I'm connected digitally and I'm thinking, am I following any superstar, any ambassador?
00:40:24
Speaker
I wanted to connect what you said before about the importance of royalties, celebrities in the Middle East.
00:40:32
Speaker
So I wanted to ask you, in your ideal future, what is the role of elite players, athletes or even royalties?
00:40:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very good point, Donata.
Influence of Celebrities and Royals
00:40:44
Speaker
As I mentioned, the patronage culture is big and anything usually that a royal does somehow has a ripple effect.
00:40:54
Speaker
And I'll go back to the example of running and triathlon in Bahrain specifically.
00:41:00
Speaker
So I was part of this group called the Bahrain Roadrunners, organizing weekly running events and monthly major events.
00:41:08
Speaker
And we did 10 events a year.
00:41:10
Speaker
Five of them were multi-sport events, three of them being triathlon.
00:41:14
Speaker
And in 2012, I believe, or 2013, the son of the king attended and witnessed one of the races and somehow got excited about it.
00:41:28
Speaker
And then he actually started to participate in the races.
00:41:34
Speaker
What happened after that was explosion of triathlon.
00:41:37
Speaker
Yeah, people started to, so all of his entourage, people that he interacts with on a daily basis, started to do it.
00:41:44
Speaker
He attracted more people because he went to races abroad and he would train with people.
00:41:49
Speaker
He brought experts into the country.
00:41:51
Speaker
That was around the time that Bahrain also invested in a cycling team.
00:41:56
Speaker
And it was led by him specifically.
00:41:58
Speaker
And so this led to kind of the infrastructure we see today in Bahrain.
00:42:02
Speaker
You see a lot of sports entities that have people that came from Bahrain roadrunners.
00:42:08
Speaker
And they are people who were part of the wave that happened because of the catalyst of the son of the king getting excited about this.
00:42:16
Speaker
So for me, there are thousands of royals, if you think about the families that exist, and they all have spheres of influence that they can really touch on the topic of sports or physical activity or diet.
00:42:30
Speaker
And so in the ideal future, indeed, I would expect more from these individuals, but not only them, also giving space for athletes who beyond their time in the spotlight, you know, when they get a medal or they're competing, they're usually marginalized, you know, or they don't have a career.
00:42:48
Speaker
as an ambassador or bringing programs to schools.
00:42:52
Speaker
And so ideally, I would like that connection between elite sports and the masses to be stronger.
00:42:58
Speaker
It's not just about winning medals.
00:43:00
Speaker
It's about the effort of training.
00:43:02
Speaker
It's about living a healthy lifestyle in which now we know people like Ronaldo, who plays in Saudi Arabia.
00:43:09
Speaker
The reason he's been able to continue for so long is because he has actually a healthy lifestyle.
00:43:14
Speaker
He sleeps well, he eats well, he hydrates well.
00:43:17
Speaker
And so these are the things that should be passed on, you know, not just the goals, but also the way that he's able to train.
00:43:25
Speaker
This actually is a perfect connection to the next part of our conversation is about defining the milestones or road towards that ideal future of yours.
00:43:42
Speaker
So you already started talking about it.
00:43:45
Speaker
So how do we reach this future?
Key Actors in Promoting Active Lifestyles
00:43:48
Speaker
And again, you mentioned before, let's start by identifying the key actors and the actions.
00:43:54
Speaker
So the key actors would be currently elite athletes who are competing now, celebrities, royal family, who else do you think would be able to enable this change?
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, the private sector is still strong.
00:44:13
Speaker
There's a lot of, in the region, something called like agency.
00:44:18
Speaker
So you have companies and usually family companies that represent global brands in the region.
00:44:26
Speaker
So they take the exclusivity to sell one product on behalf of that international brand in the region.
00:44:32
Speaker
These companies are quite big.
00:44:34
Speaker
They're quite big families, quite rich, and they've now turned into kind of like conglomerates.
00:44:40
Speaker
So these guys have very strong political connections and very strong economic connections.
00:44:46
Speaker
I believe they should play a stronger role in providing that space for physical activity.
00:44:54
Speaker
They usually are large employers in the tens of thousands, in some cases, especially when it gets to construction businesses and stuff like that.
00:45:02
Speaker
So they, I believe, would have a big role to play.
00:45:06
Speaker
The second one would be international actors.
00:45:11
Speaker
So a lot of the entities coming into the region now, they're looking for the big bucks.
00:45:16
Speaker
They're looking for money.
00:45:17
Speaker
They believe all the money is in the Middle East, but they come in just to do their events and then to leave.
00:45:24
Speaker
So I believe it's on the sports community's shoulders as well to do that in terms of international actors.
00:45:31
Speaker
And then finally, government, you know, at the end, government is the biggest employer.
00:45:36
Speaker
It's, you know, it's still an oil driven economy in many cases, meaning that most of the money comes from the ground.
00:45:43
Speaker
And that's how the government finance itself.
00:45:45
Speaker
So it is expected to take on this responsibility as well.
00:45:49
Speaker
And yeah, so those are the stakeholders I would identify, which means everybody actually.
00:45:54
Speaker
But talking about the government, since we are talking about the responsibility of the cities and the city governments, what are the milestones for them?
00:46:02
Speaker
What should they do and start doing to reach, to make their cities more active?
00:46:10
Speaker
So,
00:46:13
Speaker
Again, I'm not like an urban planning expert, but what I would foresee here is like infrastructure is an important piece.
00:46:20
Speaker
Again, going back to that health center ratio that I mentioned earlier, there needs to be an understanding of what infrastructure is needed for communities to be able to be active, especially in the hot months of the year.
00:46:33
Speaker
then you need programs.
00:46:35
Speaker
So programs meaning people, people that are educated, coach certified to be able to run community programs.
00:46:44
Speaker
And then I go back to that digital piece, which we talked about earlier, which is content and tools.
00:46:50
Speaker
So with these three things, I think like city states or governments would be in a better position to push things forward.
00:47:04
Speaker
And do you know example of any projects that are already implemented beside Abu Dhabi 360 and the National Day that you mentioned, the Sports National Sports Day?
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah, that would be that are already on the path towards that future.
00:47:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:22
Speaker
So, again, giving an example from Bahrain, the son of the king, the same person I mentioned earlier, some time ago was the president also of the Olympic Committee.
00:47:34
Speaker
And one of the initiatives there was to set up 100 community football pitches in neighborhoods around the country.
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah, these are the type of initiatives we need.
00:47:47
Speaker
Because it brings the like the the mandate at the time was to get private sector to invest in these different pitches and to finance the operations for people to go there to program it and so on.
00:48:01
Speaker
So
00:48:02
Speaker
That's one example.
00:48:04
Speaker
Another example is the Sport for All Federation in Saudi Arabia, which is doing quite a bit of work in terms of, I would call it like satellite activities around the whole country, where people are educated around sports, allowed to participate in it, and to interact with celebrities and elite athletes and so on.
00:48:29
Speaker
So then those are two initiatives.
00:48:33
Speaker
And so what are the resources needed to unlock and unleash this future?
00:48:38
Speaker
Am I right in understanding that perhaps the financial resources are not an issue?
00:48:45
Speaker
Financial resources are not an issue when they decide to mobilize it on a topic.
00:48:51
Speaker
But when it comes to this topic specifically, it's not always given the capital it needs.
00:48:59
Speaker
Part of the milestones that need to happen, again, we go back to data,
00:49:06
Speaker
There's a weakness today in terms of data collection, research, academic focus on these topics.
00:49:15
Speaker
I'm aware of very few entities that do actual research that put the Middle Eastern physical activity topic on the global research agenda.
00:49:25
Speaker
So I think besides capital, you need data and you need research and you need a space to debate these topics.
00:49:38
Speaker
Yes, we are talking about the fact that in the end it's a return on investment, investing on this for the government, because in the end it will be cost saving for health in the future, in the long run.
00:49:50
Speaker
And so data is interesting because it connects the pieces.
00:49:53
Speaker
So this is something that needs to happen as part of the roadmap to unleash this future.
00:49:58
Speaker
So what do you think are the KPIs for the city and for the government to measure?
00:50:03
Speaker
How will they measure success?
00:50:07
Speaker
It's a good question.
00:50:09
Speaker
I wouldn't go to the percentage of people doing physical activity.
00:50:14
Speaker
I think that's almost the final outcome that we want to arrive at.
00:50:18
Speaker
But to, let's say, drive the development of the system that we're talking about today, you need more like a roadmap.
00:50:27
Speaker
So a roadmap instead of specific KPIs with an understanding of where we want to arrive from a health perspective, an education perspective, a nutrition perspective, a lifestyle perspective, an urban planning perspective.
00:50:45
Speaker
a sports perspective, you know, if you think about even like elite performance, all of these things are interconnected.
00:50:51
Speaker
So I think what you need first is really, again, I don't want to use like one holistic strategy, but some semblance of what, how those things integrate.
00:51:02
Speaker
And today, nobody is connecting those dots for government or within government.
00:51:08
Speaker
It seems to be something that's intuitive and that we talk about, but there's no real... So I would start there.
00:51:14
Speaker
We need that foundational step first before moving on to implementation.
00:51:21
Speaker
You actually mentioned before that sports is not owned by one single ministry, right?
00:51:25
Speaker
It's something that is shared across different ministries.
00:51:28
Speaker
So do you think you need the creation of a sport ministry or a sport institution that centralizes all these efforts that you mentioned?
00:51:38
Speaker
So, yeah, the sports ministries today, their job is medals.
00:51:43
Speaker
That's what their responsibility is.
00:51:46
Speaker
And by extension, this is what national federations then do.
00:51:49
Speaker
And those are the entities that deal with each other.
00:51:51
Speaker
National federations in some countries, clubs as well are under the Ministry of Sport.
00:51:57
Speaker
And none of them have the KPI of getting people active.
00:52:01
Speaker
So indeed, I think the Ministry of Sport, as they're structured today, do not have the capacity.
00:52:09
Speaker
That doesn't mean they won't in the future.
00:52:11
Speaker
But you need other actors to come in to support the development of this capacity or this, let's say, vision for getting people physically active, which we all know drives amateur sports and eventually sports and eventually medals.
00:52:28
Speaker
So yes, I think you need more actors than the Ministry of Sport.
00:52:33
Speaker
And so going back to the idea of the international actors, what is their role?
00:52:38
Speaker
Is it an international federations being responsible for developing the capacity of the national federations?
00:52:44
Speaker
Is it what you see?
00:52:46
Speaker
Yeah, I see, for example, what's happening in the Olympics next year, right?
00:52:50
Speaker
Paris 2024, the marathon will be open to the public.
00:52:55
Speaker
So it seems like both the organizing committee of the Olympic Games, the IOC,
00:53:03
Speaker
actually as well as World Athletics, thought about this being a good idea, which I believe it's a great idea.
00:53:11
Speaker
So it sounds like there's somebody at World Athletics that is thinking about this, right?
00:53:16
Speaker
And actually we know this individual, he's somebody we know, his name is Alessio Ponce who works on mass athletics.
00:53:24
Speaker
So these individuals, if they're given the right platforms, they can be advising people
00:53:31
Speaker
In this case, let's talk about the Saudi Athletics Association or the Qatar Athletics Association on how to strengthen grassroots sports, how to give more capabilities to the community to organize events and how that drives the elite performance side.
00:53:47
Speaker
So yes, definitely I believe international federations need to play a bigger role.
00:53:52
Speaker
They need to be coming into the region not just to do their major events and to get paid for those, but actually to take advantage
00:53:58
Speaker
ownership a little bit or like influence the bigger part of grassroots.
00:54:07
Speaker
Saying on grassroots, you mentioned before about the importance of investing in youth, young people.
00:54:15
Speaker
How do we give space to young people to voice their ideas, their needs when it comes to sports and physical activity?
00:54:28
Speaker
So physical education is something that was part of the curriculum for many years and was a strong part of it.
00:54:36
Speaker
It's lost its importance in the academic curriculum in many, many countries.
00:54:43
Speaker
So I believe if you have physical education as a strong component of your education,
00:54:50
Speaker
in the K-12 period, then it already puts you in a good position to want to continue and be suggestible to doing other activities and sports in the future.
00:55:03
Speaker
So I believe, yes, we need to hear the youth
00:55:07
Speaker
But more than that, we need to give them a chance to be more physically active by introducing it in what they do on a daily basis, which is go to school.
00:55:17
Speaker
So physical education at schools, I think, is something important.
00:55:19
Speaker
One thing, which an interesting stat you would like to know, is that Saudi, after, let's say, opening up sports for girls in schools, so this, I imagine, like, a school in Saudi for girls did not have PE teachers.
00:55:37
Speaker
And now suddenly you need PE teachers across the country.
00:55:41
Speaker
Also females.
00:55:43
Speaker
Exactly, female physical education teachers.
00:55:47
Speaker
There are some estimates that are putting this number for Saudi at 100,000 that need to be trained, coached, certified, whatever you call it, to be able to go and teach these girls at schools, but also at universities and then at different entities.
00:56:04
Speaker
So it's a big gap.
00:56:08
Speaker
And there are organizations around the world that can certify, that can coach, that can educate.
00:56:14
Speaker
And these are not international federations, I agree.
00:56:17
Speaker
There are other types of organizations, but they need to be brought into the fold as well.
00:56:21
Speaker
I was in Colorado Springs a few months ago to visit the Olympic Training Center of Team USA.
00:56:30
Speaker
And it's become an ecosystem of entities.
00:56:32
Speaker
And one of them is the National Strength and Conditioning Association.
00:56:35
Speaker
And they see the Middle East as an area to grow.
00:56:39
Speaker
So strength and conditioning being for gym teachers, for gym coaches in private gyms, for clubs, and so on and so forth.
00:56:48
Speaker
So potentially thousands of individuals that need to be certified and licensed on an annual basis.
00:56:54
Speaker
But there's nobody...
00:56:56
Speaker
was actually ask these guys, they're considered like the gold standard, to come into the region.
00:57:02
Speaker
So all of this sports discussion is happening.
00:57:05
Speaker
We want to create a sector and industry out of sports, but nobody's considering how do we certify these people?
00:57:09
Speaker
How do we coach these people?
00:57:12
Speaker
If we want to get everybody involved, we need to make sure they can actually handle this.
00:57:17
Speaker
And so this education piece, I feel very strongly about the physical education piece because you hear stories about how kids learn sports in schools.
00:57:29
Speaker
Over the years, it's kind of like you give a soccer ball to the boys and you give a volleyball to the girls and there's an hour gone.
00:57:36
Speaker
That was it.
00:57:38
Speaker
But there's no like, this is what sports is about.
00:57:40
Speaker
It's about fitness.
00:57:41
Speaker
It's about, you know.
00:57:42
Speaker
So again, I think for the youth, K-12,
00:57:46
Speaker
really important.
00:57:47
Speaker
So Ministry of Education needs to get involved in that.
00:57:51
Speaker
That's actually, again, you're doing the job for us.
00:57:54
Speaker
Great transition for the last part of our conversation, which is a call for action.
00:58:04
Speaker
What should be done already today and by whom to enable this change?
00:58:10
Speaker
So a big question, I must say.
00:58:16
Speaker
But yeah, I think we touched on it a little bit in the last few moments as well.
00:58:19
Speaker
So again, if we go back to the demographic pyramid, so there are two parts of the pyramid we should focus on.
Educational Programs and Infrastructure Development
00:58:27
Speaker
One is the largest part, which is the one that will grow old in the next 20, 30 years.
00:58:32
Speaker
And how do we work on making sure that they consider a physically active lifestyle as something that is possible for them, even though they have not been brought up that way?
00:58:43
Speaker
And then the other portion is how do you focus on the youth?
00:58:46
Speaker
And these two groups are probably the influencing bodies are different.
00:58:52
Speaker
So for the youth, I would say the Ministry of Education has a big role to play there and the Ministry of Sport.
00:58:59
Speaker
Ministry of Education for that physical education piece.
00:59:03
Speaker
and making sure that there is programs to bring people to inspire them to go to sporting events to talk about nutrition to talk about how cycling can help with climate change you know all of the ways that we know that physical activity can interact with and influence social aspects economic aspects environmental aspects
00:59:26
Speaker
Then with the larger portion, you need to create more infrastructure, you need to create more programs, and you need the involvement of, I believe, private sector that is, let's say, regulated and empowered and, let's say, introduced by government.
00:59:46
Speaker
But yeah, those are the two entities, I would say, like two groups of entities, so Ministry of Education, Ministry of Sports for the youth, and then more the private sector, which again, employs these people, has a possibility to build wellness programs, incentivize for insurance premiums to drop, right?
01:00:06
Speaker
So those type of things need to be thought out more for like the other, there's two sets of populations.
01:00:13
Speaker
And the last question here, what should the city governments do right now?
Call for Debate and Policy Creation
01:00:18
Speaker
The call for action for them, please.
01:00:20
Speaker
The call for action, I would say, is to create forums for debating this and creating policy around it.
01:00:27
Speaker
So the Middle East is not known to be a democratic region, but doesn't mean that debate around these topics doesn't happen, right?
01:00:37
Speaker
So I believe there is a lot of people that would want to work on these topics, would want to volunteer their time, would want to refocus their efforts, if given the right platform to do so.
01:00:49
Speaker
There's very few spaces to talk about this topic right now.
01:00:54
Speaker
It doesn't happen at any government forum.
01:00:56
Speaker
It doesn't happen with conferences.
01:00:59
Speaker
So if government was able to facilitate that, you would then get like a bigger wave of people that are contributing to and want to focus on the topic.
01:01:12
Speaker
And then you come to the semblance of a strategy, which we talked about earlier, that could be built around this.
01:01:20
Speaker
I have a gazillion more questions that I would like to ask and keep on discussing, but I think we have to wrap up here and it's been a super interesting conversation that we had with you, Hisham.
01:01:32
Speaker
I've learned many things.
01:01:34
Speaker
Some of the key ideas that I'm going to take away are the distinction between sport and physical activity that can help trigger some change and get people more active.
01:01:47
Speaker
And the idea of giving space, creating space for discussion, like you said, with the forums, but also for action, community-led initiatives, so that this can complement from the bottom up the initiatives that will be led by the government.
01:02:01
Speaker
And Sasha, do you have anything to add?
01:02:04
Speaker
I do.
01:02:04
Speaker
I like very much the idea of leveraging on existing tools like national ID and existing digital infrastructure.
01:02:12
Speaker
It's already there.
01:02:14
Speaker
And it's important, as Hisham said, to start discussing it.
01:02:18
Speaker
So the first action, it's actually bring this topic to the state agenda, to the city agenda, to communities agenda, private sector agenda.
01:02:27
Speaker
So this is very important to start today with.
01:02:30
Speaker
and work with what is there already existing.
01:02:33
Speaker
This idea I liked very much.
01:02:34
Speaker
And we see that this is happening little by little, but the speed of change should be faster if we want to have a healthy population 10, 20 years from now that will be the majority soon.
01:02:45
Speaker
Did we miss anything?
01:02:48
Speaker
No, as you said, it's a deep topic and we just scratched the surface here, but I'd really like to thank you for creating the space for me to share these ideas and insights and
01:02:59
Speaker
It got me thinking, your questions got me thinking in different ways about the problem and the challenge ahead.
01:03:05
Speaker
So thank you.
01:03:05
Speaker
Thank you for that.
01:03:07
Speaker
That's great to hear.
01:03:08
Speaker
And thank you very much, Hisham, for being here with us today.
01:03:13
Speaker
And this brings us to the end of our show.
01:03:24
Speaker
Thank you for listening.
01:03:26
Speaker
If you like this conversation, don't forget to rate and share.
01:03:29
Speaker
This show is produced by Score Sport Think Tank.
01:03:32
Speaker
We are independent sport thinkers who aim to create safe spaces for sincere discussions.
01:03:37
Speaker
Check out our website, score-sport.com, and our LinkedIn page to find more information about this episode and what we do.
01:03:45
Speaker
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