Jean-Baptiste Alaize is a Paralympic athlete and Champion for Peace since 2016 for his great involvement promoting the values of sport as a tool for peace. His inspiring life experience and his determination to overcome visible and invisible wounds of war propelled him to the highest level of international sport competition.
Last weekend, dozens of youngsters passionately listened Jean-Baptiste’s story during the workshop of the Peace Jam Monaco Youth Leadership Conference organised by the Peace Jam Foundation in partnership with Peace and Sport. For two hours, he calmly explained that when he was three years old he became victim of the 1994 Burundi. During the war, he lost many of his family members and one of his leg.
Jean-Baptiste Alaize said: “Sport is a therapy that makes me move forward, it helps me forgiving and sharing my experience, my pain. It helps me opening up to people and taking out the worries inside me. Sport took me out of silent and trauma, it allows me to go beyond my suffering, to discuss and to share about life experience. Before, I used to be alone, silent but now, thanks to sport, I can overcome my difficulties. Being a Champion for Peace is an opportunity to meet with the youth and to share a message of peace.”
This summer, Jean Baptiste Alaize will be also participating in the Friendship Games from 11th to 13rd of August in Burundi. These three days of trans-border sports event aim at promoting peace between youngster from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda – a region deeply damaged by war. For this occasion, Jean-Baptiste Alaize will bring to the young participants of the Friendship Games some peace messages including drawings, poems and videos sent by the students who participated in the Peace Jam workshop.
Every year, the Peace Jam foundation creates young leaders committed to positive change in themselves, their communities, and the world with the involvement of a Nobel Peace Laureate. On the occasion of the Peace Jam Foundation workshop and with the aim to bring together the peace world with the sporting family an encounter was organized between our Champion for Peace and Oscar Arias, Nobel Peace Prize winner 1987 and former President of Costa Rica.
