Interview with the walking group team
What is the Walking lovers associate is all about?
We are just a group of people who loves and practice walking. The original idea behind our group is that we noticed, walking sport did not have an entity or umbrella to gather all walking lovers under it. As a sport it is frozen in “Kuwait Athletics Association” and it is not part of the Kuwait Olympic Committee, we felt that there is a need to gather walking fans and organize events and activities which promote and help to spread the awareness and practice of walking in our society.
We take this opportunity to remember Dr. Abdul Rahman Al Awadi who supported walking as a sport in Kuwait and had a very positive impact on this sport. When he was Minister of Planning, he decided that every Kuwaiti neighborhood must have a walking track. He supported the walking fans group since the very beginning and he was the first founder along with Captain Mahmood Sabri. Every one of us has very deep respect and admiration to him.
What is the effect of sports in General on our daily life and specially walking?
The vision of our association is “Walking in a way of life”. The goals and objectives of the League are to spread the culture of waking in Kuwait society. The message we want to address to the Kuwaiti community is “walk and you will be healthy”. It is known that walking is like an antibiotic against everything that is harmful to our health. It is the easiest way to live a happy healthy life. How can walking improve our mood? Walking has a positive effect on the person who practices it. Primarily it improves health. Doctors advise everyone to practice this easy and useful sport. It helps fight all modern life diseases such as diabetes, cholesterol and high blood pressure and many other illnesses. It has a very strong and positive effect on human mode and psychology. It even has a refreshing effect. If you practice it regularly it becomes not only a habit but more like an addiction a wonderful and useful addiction, if you miss to practice it one day you will not feel happy.
How do you seek to advertise for your association? Actually, we rely mainly on networking and social media in addition to the events and the walkathons we are organizing which attract many new people. We are creating a snow ball-like momentum that has its own inertia and we believe once we create a critical mass no additional campaigning may be required. In fact we hope that today will help promote and spread the awareness of this sport.
How does the Public Authority for Sport support your association?
There is continuous corporation between our association and “Public Authority for Sport”. All our events and races are done through the Authority who handles all communications with concerned governmental authorities such as Ministry of Interiors or Ministry of Health or the Touristic Enterprises Company. We take this opportunity to thank the Public authority for Sport for their continuous support throughout the last few years. They were partners and more like road companions in all events and activities. This close cooperation will remain strong inshallah.