Why does one of Russia’s largest private investment funds want to get involved in Peace and Sport?
MP: Along with ONEXIM’s entire senior team, I believe deeply in sport’s massive untapped potential to make the world a better place. It is a great unifier, a source of passion for millions; it’s essential to people’s health and is a key tenet of entrepreneurship in that it instils a sense of friendly competition and fair-play. A traditional way of supporting sports is to invest in sports clubs of course. However, being personally involved in sport in Russia since the early 90s, I wanted to go a step further and I realized that by sponsoring Peace and Sport, we could have a greater impact because the organisation’s objective is precisely to leverage sport to improve communication and education in under-privileged areas and regions afflicted by conflict and social unrest all over the world. It is about helping the world become a better place, about empowering young people, who are disadvantaged because of where they were born, by giving them confidence in their abilities to succeed again
