Kenya’s two-time Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge is set to mentor the U20 World Athletics Athlete Refugee Team (ART), using his great experience in the sport to educate and inspire upcoming athletes, World Athletics announced on Wednesday 13 December.
The U20 World Athletics Athlete Refugee Team was formed as a pilot in 2022, with the objective of presenting a well-prepared U20 ART for the World Athletics U20 Championships Lima 24.
The team is composed of athletes who have fled violence, conflict and injustice at home, and stems from the Refugee Olympic Team that was founded in 2016 and took part in the Olympic Games that year.
Since then, the World Athletics Athlete Refugee Team has evolved into the world’s only year-round full-time refugee team programme.
The team has also competed at nearly every World Athletics Series event since.
In the camp based at Kakuma Refugee Camp, located around 100km from the South Sudan border and Kapsabet, Kipchoge will join 2007 world 800m champion Janeth Jepkosgei – head coach of the U20 ART, Swiss educator Barbara Moser-Mercer who leads the programme, and coach Arcade Arakaza.
Among the tasks Kipchoge is set to undertake include; motivating the team members by sharing his knowledge and discipline in the sport, encouraging them to pursue their education and read books, which is one of his own passions, and also share life skills as part of his commitment towards helping the underprivileged.
As per World Athletics, his mentorship program, one that coincides with the announcement of the Multistakeholder Pledge on Sport for Inclusion and Protection of Refugees, will begin in January 2024, and will hold through to next year’s World Athletics U20 Championships Lima 24 scheduled for 27-21 August.
World Athletics’ pledge outlines the role that sport can play in improving the lives of refugees, including through sport programming, policy change, skill development, and communication and advocacy efforts.
Earlier this month, World Athletics was part of a delegation including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Olympic Refugee Foundation (ORF), National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOCK) and African Higher Education in Emergencies Network (AHEEN) that visited the Kakuma and Kalobeyei refugee camps in Kenya.
World Athletics was invited to be part of the delegation by the ORF, recognising the work that World Athletics is doing in this domain.
