Supported

Spirit of Football (SOF) is an award-winning, nonprofit organization based in Germany, England and Brazil. Since 2005, SOF has been running programs using football as a tool to tackle the most pertinent challenges facing societies and the planet. SOF operates under three principle pillars of “diversity”, “respect”, and “teamwork”.

Every 4 years since 2002, “The Ball” (one football) has travelled overland from Battersea Park in London, where the first official football match took place, to the FIFA World Cup using a common call to action: “One Ball, One World”. The Ball is more than just a journey; Spirit of Football works closely with multiple partners along the way on specific social and environmental topics. From exchange platforms to policy change, The Ball brings together a diverse group of stakeholders from governments, schools, the football industry & civil society.

In 2022 and 2023, for the first time ever, The Ball is traveling to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in New Zealand and Australia, delivering workshops to identify local environmental problems, demonstrate their global relevance and showcase possible solutions to climate change. This time The Ball uses the positive power of the world’s most popular sport to encourage people to commit to climate action.

GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf is the international non-profit entirely dedicated to helping accelerate sustainability in and through golf. Its goal is to work collaboratively to help the sport embrace environmental and social issues and become widely acclaimed for its proactive leadership in fostering nature, conserving resources, building stronger communities and taking climate action.

 

Our mission is to harness the power of athletes to inspire climate action. There are many athletes who already want to use their platform to make a difference to issues beyond their sport. If this is you, we’re here to support you – formulating campaigns and collaborating with every athlete who wants to use their voice for good. Whether you’ve already spoken out on issues you care about, or have never really considered it, all of us can worry that we don’t have enough knowledge to use our voice, or that if we do speak we’ll be called hypocrites. Whatever your experience, we’re creating training and resources to support athletes as confident, effective advocates for change.

The Council’s vision is a world where responsibly produced sports events are the norm and its mission is to provide objective, independent verification of the socially and environmentally responsible work event organizers are doing and to actively support event organizers who strive to make a difference in their communities. The current version of the Council’s Certification standards (v.4.2) was developed by an outside working group of both sustainability and sport industry experts, reviewed by a wide range of stakeholders throughout 2013 and implemented in January 2014.