HOW YOUNG NIGERIAN LIFT BBC SPORT AWARDS
A Nigerian who set up an ethnic minority sport organisation has been rewarded by the BBC for his outstanding contributions. Adekanmi Abayomi a Belfast based volunteer is set for heroic things.
A Belfast-based volunteer Adekanmi Abayomi who set up the Ethnic Minority Sports Organisation Northern Ireland group (EMSONI) won a BBC Sport NI's 2020 Unsung Hero Award for his work in encouraging people from different ethnic minorities to be involved in sporting activities. The young Nigerian. According to BBC, Kanmi is very passionate about his ideas, and the burning desire and willingness to make an impact in the his immediate society has shown through.
Kanmi, as he is known, is passionate about how sport can help integrate ethnic minorities in communities.He is also a qualified football and handball coach and referee. He also teaches walking football twice a week and helped set up the Walking Football Federation in Northern Ireland, which now boasts two teams from ethnic minority backgrounds. But when asked about his feelings after the presentations, he said "I really didn't expect this award. It came as a shock to me, so I am really excited and happy about it. This will be in my memory for a long time," he said
Not only that, Kanmi will be representing Northern Ireland as one of the 15 regional finalists for the overall Unsung Hero Award, with the winner being announced live on BBC One on 20 December.
The first Ethnic Minority Sports Leadership Summit was first held by him in 2019, this summit earned an appointment to the board of the Northern Ireland Sport and Human Rights Forum. His volunteering activities have helped a lot of people to get into sport. His involvement with EMSONI sees him encouraging people of all ages and backgrounds to play sport - whether that is through the day-to-day operations of booking pitches, organising taster sessions for women's swimming, organising cricket taster sessions, handball or badminton.
He had really put in a lot of work by creating one of the most successful initiatives, the Northern Ireland Confederations Cup last year - a football tournament bringing together teams from 12 communities across Northern Ireland, planned to be a yearly tournament, the competition included to the from different ethnic minorities, teams from Algerian, Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, Polish and Belfast backgrounds, took part for about nine weeks in the summer "The attitude of helping society has always been part of his ethos, he insisted his main purpose in Northern Ireland use sport to help his community break barriers holding back sport participation. He's also interested in addressing racial inequalities in sport. Such incidence in the champions league game last night, a last group game between Basaksehir and PSG, a racial slur used presumably carelessly caused the abandonment of a football match could be avoided through his volunteering work. "It is important that in terms of changing society for better, we make use of sport for different ethnic minority to participate in it".
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