Nike and Special Olympics, the sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, have announced a three-year global partnership which further strengthens their longtime collaboration. This new phase of the collaboration builds upon Nike’s support of Special Olympics Oregon for more than two decades, its recent support of Special Olympics Berlin and grants to other local programs.
Over the course of the new three-year partnership, Nike and Special Olympics will collaborate on updating Special Olympics’ Global Unified Sports Coach courses and train-the-trainer materials. Special Olympics Unified Sports is the Special Olympics program where athletes with and without intellectual disabilities play together on the same team.
Nike and Special Olympics train more than 600 volunteers
Nike and Special Olympics plan to recruit and train more than 600 new volunteer Unified Sports coaches from four key communities, aiming for better demographic representation. The partnership will concentrate on the communities of Oregon, Berlin, Johannesburg and Tokyo. Through the new partnership, Nike and Special Olympics also seek to increase opportunities for young women and girls to access Unified Sports.
Special Olympics was founded in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a sister of US President John F. Kennedy, to end discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities through sports. Today, the organization has more than 4.6 million athletes and Unified Sports partners and over one million coaches and volunteers in more than 200 countries and territories. Special Olympics offers more than 30 Olympic-type sports and delivers over 60,000 events and competitions each year.
