Qatar Football Association (QFA) and Qatar Shell’s Koora Time initiative has been honoured as the Best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Initiative at the Sports Industry Awards 2016 held in Dubai in March this year.
Koora Time is a five-year sustainable initiative designed to improve the health and wellbeing of Qatar’s youth through football. The initiative facilitates access to additional hours of physical activity and more opportunities and spaces to play football. The flagship programme Il’AbWe’Yana provides each child with an additional 72 hours of physical activity over its 18-week duration.
This award adds to Koora Time’s many accolades which include recognition at CSR Award Qatar for ‘Best CSR Impact Initiative’, the Sport Industry Awards 2014 for ‘Best Youth Development Initiative’, the AFC Dream of Asia Award in the area of social responsibility and the Dar Al Sharq CSR Award for Best Sports Initiative.
Judges were impressed by findings published by an independent sports education research agency showing that the program had significantly improved the Body Mass Index (BMI) rate of participants in the overweight category.
The awards category featured eight companies from different sectors, competing to demonstrate how their CSR initiative best use sport as a platform to promote corporate social responsibility. Judges looked for evidence of community engagement and achievement of pre-set objectives.
“These are exciting times for us and our partner Qatar Shell. Since Koora Time’s inauguration in March 2013, we have witnessed some truly fantastic results. Being recognized as leaders in the Middle East acknowledges just how much we can contribute to society and we hope others are inspired to follow suit,” said QFA Koora Time Project manager Hamad al-Kuwari.
“The Koora Time initiative is part of QFA’s CSR strategy which aims to constantly leverage on its existing partnerships to educate the communities about the positive values of playing football and inspire the youth to play football,” he added.
“At Qatar Shell we are committed to supporting the Qatar National Vision 2030 by working with Qatari partners to create and deliver long-term contributions to society that generate measurable social impact,” said Qatar Shell CSR manager Mohamed Abujbara.