October 17, 2014.  Earlier this year Coaches Across Continents announced the largest partnership in sport for social impact.  Together with Peace One Day, we teamed up to supply organizations with a free soccer resource packet that uses CAC games to educate about peace and encourage the development of skill sets that lead to peace building.  On 21 September, these efforts came to the fruition when millions around the world celebrated and recognized Peace Day.

Together with Peace One Day, Coaches Across Continents is using their One Day One Goal platform to use football as a peace building educational exercise.  Along with their other efforts, the goal for 2014 is to have Peace Day recognized by one billion people globally.  This first year of our partnership was a great start to spreading that awareness.  Overall nearly four hundred sport for social development organizations took advantage of this free resource to educate their communities on peace building practices.  These included organizations on all six continents, and they were distributed and available in six different languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swahili).

The focus of this year’s celebrations was on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Great Lakes region of Africa (focusing on Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania).  So far in those five countries we have confirmation of the resource packet being used by 50 organizations to promote peace, with more coming forward every day.  Each of these organizations also held an event for 21 September, the International Day of Peace.  These include CAC implementing community partners as well as organizations who have heard about the power of sport through other avenues like StreetFootballWorld, One World Futbol, FIFA Football for Hope, and Peace One Day.

Stories, pictures, and videos from around the world continue to arrive speaking of the incredible power that football has as a unifying factor.  Check out some of them on our Facebook page.  If you or your organization want to tell your story from Peace Day, please contact us at: or .

Celebrating Peace in Goma, Congo

Celebrating Peace in Diadema, Brazil

Celebrating Peace in Kenya