Sporting heroes from across the world will visit Donegal today to take part in a sports trip for children from both sides of the Border.
The special event is being run by Youth Sports Foyle, the first ever cross-Border sports initiative, which beat off stiff competition to become one of five projects from around the world to be selected for funding under the inaugural Laureus Sport Awards in the Sport for Good category.
Ian Botham, Ed Moses, Kapil Dev and Tanni Grey Thompson, all members of the Laureus World Sport Academy, will join 48 children on a three-day sports trip at the Gartan Outdoor Pursuits Centre.
"Of the 48 kids, 24 come from each side of the Border and there is an equal number of Catholics and Protestants and girls and boys so that nobody feels like a minority and they don't feel outvoted," said Mr Bernie O'Callaghan, Youth Sports Foyle Development Officer for Donegal.
Youth Sports Foyle was set up in 1997 and is funded by the Programme for Peace and Reconciliation. The group was nominated for the Laureus Sport Awards in 2000 where it received funding for improving cross-Border relations and strengthening community links.
To date, the group has set up 154 school sites and trained a total of 35,000 children in school programmes on both sides of the Border. The schools taking part in this initiative are Convoy Joint National School, Desertegney National School (Donegal), St Celia's HS (Derry) and Castlederg HS (Tyrone).
The four other projects to get funding are the Mathare Youth Sports Association in Nairobi, Kenya - which set up a soccer league in the slums of Nairobi; The Midnight Basketball League, Virginia, US - which runs a basketball league from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. to keep children off the streets; Special Olympics Unified Sports Programme, Czech Republic - which brings able-bodied and disabled swimmers together, and Run for Peace, Peace Parks Foundation, South Africa, which has yet to get off the ground.