Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 11, 2013: VERO Communications, a leading international sports marketing and communications agency, together with its Brazilian office and Brazilian partner, Approach, has been appointed by Fight for Peace, a frontline sports-related charity, to help raise the profile of its work in Brazil and internationally.
Fight for Peace uses boxing and martial arts, combined with education and personal development, to realise the potential of young people in communities that suffer from crime and violence. The project was founded in 2000 by Luke Dowdney MBE, a former amateur boxer, with the aim of providing an alternative to the armed violence and drug trafficking that can affect young residents in favelas in Rio de Janeiro. British Prime Minister David Cameron recently visited the Rio Fight for Peace project, which has also been featured on the BBC’s ‘Brazil with Michael Palin’.
In November 2007 the Fight for Peace London Academy was established in the borough of Newham in the build-up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In 2007, gun and knife crime affected young people in Newham collectively more than anywhere else in London. Fight for Peace now supports 2,500 young people each year and is now advising a network of charities across the world on how to make similar frontline projects work successfully.
By the end of 2015, Fight for Peace will have trained 120 organisations that work in communities affected by gun crime, directly helping 70,000 young children around the world.
Commenting on VERO’s appointment, Luke Dowdney MBE, Founder of Fight for Peace, said:
“VERO Communications with their Brazil office alongside the Approach team possess the ideal mix of credentials to support Fight for Peace on a national and global scale. Since we started the project in 2000, we have always been ambitious in our plans to build our work to help young people living in the most difficult circumstances and we are delighted that we now have the right agencies in place to help us raise our international profile, secure new sponsors and strengthen our stakeholder and political connections.”
Mike Lee OBE, VERO Chairman, said:
“Fight for Peace is a remarkable charity and it is an honour to be working with Luke and his team. I visited the project on my last visit to Brazil and I was hugely impressed with the professionalism and commitment of the people behind the scenes and the life-changing work that they do in the most challenging of environments.
“Fight for Peace has a great story to tell and we look forward to working with Luke and his team to support their work and the opportunities ahead with the world’s two biggest sporting events heading to Brazil.” —- By: Robert Fawdon
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