23: Esperanto and Sports: World Languages

 I've included a PICTURE of the UN top official, General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, British Ambassador John Sawyers and myself:


Additional pictures of me at the football field or the UN are here:

UN Football
April 24, 2009 -
20 ambasadoroj konkurencas por bonkoraj organizoj en militintaj landoj
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Message from neil.nachum:

Sports and Esperanto: World Languages Monday, April 27, 2009
As a volunteer at the United Nations, Neil Blontein was pleased to know that the Lichtenstein and Chilean delegations were sponsoring a "diplomatic" soccer match on April the 25th, 2009 for charitable purposes. Upon arriving he learned that it was even better. Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, and a dozen other ambassadors were playing soccer for peace.
This seemed as idealistic as the Universal Esperanto Association, which he represents at the UN.(There are a few thousand non-governmental-organizations with annual permits at the UN.) Wikipedia readers know that Esperanto is a widely used langauge, often among the 20 most used languages in the history of wikipedia. Esperanto initiator, L.L.Zamenhof, emphasized the application of the Golden Rule and international friendship as a prerequsite for lasting peace.
The players represented a diverse age range from men in their 30's to their 60's and one Italian female diplomat. Good feelings were present throughout the games and when the winning and losing teams posed for pictures.
Neil was in a unique position to discuss the benefits of Esperanto-it seemed only about 80 friends and family of the diplomats were present. Former Australian Ambassador Ralph Harry knew Esperanto could facilitate relations among athletes and produced 40 multilingual dictionaries and distributed many before the Munich Olympics, all including Esperanto. The UEA rep was pleased to share individual information on Esperanto with the ambassadors of Paraguay, Chile, East Timor, Lichtenstein, Austria, Great Britain, Zambia, as well as Ban Ki-moon.
Realistically many leaders still need more information to understand the usefullness of Esperanto and at the same time average people need to be more numerous in their support of Esperanto before it becomes a true Universal Language.

sources U.N. Ambassadors Kick It Around in N.Y.C. - Goal BlogU.N. Ambassadors Kick It Around in N.Y.C.. By Jack Bell. For too many people in the United States and around the world, the game of soccer is viewed as a ...April 24, 2009 - Goal

I recently discovered Wikinews, a division of Wikipedia. Wikinews has not utilized Esperanto like its parent Wikipedia but I offered the following article which may require additional editing before full publishing is allowed:

Other Sources

• Ralph Harry*
• http://www.linguistic-rights.org/
• http://www.un.org/dpi/ngosection/index.asp
• www.un.org/esa
• play31 - Blog Archive - The DiploMatch

*
La diplomato kiu ridis / Ralph Harry ; bildoj de Vane Lindesay
Aventuroj en Esperantujo / de Ralph Harry
The North was always near / Ralph Harry
No man is a hero : pioneers of Australian diplomacy / Ralph Harry
Adventures in Esperantoland / by Ralph Henry
Malnova ligilo: http://www.lingvaj-rajtoj.org/bildoj/John_Sawyers_brita_ambasadoro__Ban_Ki-moon_Ghenerala_sekretario_UN__Neil_Blonstein_UEA-reprezentanto_UN_Novjorko.jpg&gt

http://uri.fi/HE/