New: adidas pushes us to Move For The Planet

Move For The Planet.

Today, adidas announced the second installment of their Move For The Planet campaign, urging everyone to move to create change. It’s pretty simple – track your physical activity across various sports and that in turn raises money for areas that are stricken by natural disasters (heat wave, flooding, you know the deal).

The campaign started last Friday (May 10th) and runs until the 22nd.

Just to put things into perspective, extreme weather conditions have an increasing impact on the places people play and practice sports. Statitistics reveal that by 2050, almost one-fourth of the English football league team’s stadiums (23 out of 92) are projected to be partially or completely flooded every year. What’s even more shocking is that half of former Winter Olmypic host cities won’t be able to host future games in the same timeframe.

Last year, over a million people took part in the brand’s campaign, with 63.1% of the people running, walking (17.9%), and cycling (9.2%). This year, adidas has expanded the initiative to 100 sports which includes a lot of our favorite sports such as volleyball, boxing, biking and many more.

For every 10 minutes of movement logged on the adidas Running App during the campaign (that’s May 10-22), adidas will donate €1 – up to a total of €1.5 million. These funds will be used to help create real-world change, through education on sustainability and the enhancement of facilities to make them more resilient against extreme weather conditions.

Ashley Czarnowski, Senior Director, Global Purpose Marketing at adidas said: “We’re excited to build on the success of the first year of Move for The Planet, which brought together a community of over one million people across the world.

This year people can record movement in over 100 sports and we are expanding the impact of the programme to include a new set of projects and initiatives. Whether it’s taking part at the grassroots or competing at the highest level, we all have a deep connection to the places we play. Together we can unite as a global sporting community to help some of those places, by making sports facilities more resilient to extreme weather conditions and providing education on sustainability.”

Common Goal is a global impact movement that aims to shift society towards a more sustainable and equitable future through sport – who unite Community organizations, athletes, clubs, brands, and other stakeholders to collaborate towards the wellbeing of our people and planet.

Olivia Baston-Pitt, Senior Impact Sponsorship Manager at Common Goal said: “We’re thrilled that the Move For The Planet initiative is back for a second year. The success of last year meant we were able to increase the accessibility of sports for individuals who haven’t always had that privilege.

Take the Cancha Violeta sports space in San Pedro Xalostoc, Mexico, where we were able to support the installation of a brand-new multi-sport pitch and a drainage programme that collects water for the neighboring grass pitch and garden.

Alongside Common Goal, adidas will also be supporting UN Climate Change – Sports for Climate Action to develop a series of training modules for sports and NGOs operating in the nexus of sport and development. The UN Climate Change is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. The partnership is centered on using sport to educate and engage communities on climate-related topics and sustainable practices.

The funds created by Move For The Planet will go towards creating publicly accessible training materials as well as the hosting of training sessions with networks of NGOs and other organizations to enable them to transform communities in the service of future sport on a thriving planet.

For more information on how to join in or for more on the initiative itself, please visit adidas.com/movefortheplanet.