The Olympic Movement advocates using sport not just as a physical activity but also as a means of educating people through good sportsmanship, fair play, and respect for fellow athletes. It encourages men and women of different races, religions, and nationalities to work peacefully together in competition toward common goals. The Olympic Movement works to expand these lessons beyond the sports arena in the hope of promoting peace and a sense of brotherhood throughout the world. Compare these ideals as cited in the Olympic charter with what we observe.
AIMS:
Students think creatively about the benefits and costs of hosting the Olympic games.
Students understand information from maps.
Students communicate clearly and problem solve in order to plan.
Students work cooperatively to solve problems.
1. Consider the benefits of hosting the Olympic games
Begin with asking the students to think, pair, share on the question: How might hosting the Olympics make Vancouver and British Columbia a better place to live? Record the responses.
Think about new venues (who builds these and what will happen to them after the Olympics?); new public transport and roads (who builds and what will they be used for after the Olympics?); tourists and athletes will visit (where will they stay, what will they eat, what will they buy and do? Who provides these things?); people in other countries will learn about British Columbia and may want to visit later; new technologies will have been developed; the city will have been beautified.
2. Examining the Myths of Hosting the Olympic Games
Read the following article: "Myths About Landing the Olympics" By Stefan Szymanski, The Washington Post. Sunday, October 4, 2009
Link HERE
Article Text HERE
3. Costs of Hosting the Olympic Games: Displacement
Ask students to think about where the Olympics events will be held. Discuss the number of Olympic sports and athletes. Ask students about what sort of buildings and facilities will be required? Do students think a city would have these buildings already? Would they be built especially for the Olympics?
Show students the map of the:
2008 Beijing Olympic sites HERE
2010 Vancouver Olympic sites HERE
Ask students to find the new and existing facilities. Ask students what they think would have been in the location of the new venues before they were built. Tell students that in order to build the facilities required to run the Olympics in Beijing approximately 1.25 million people have had to move.
Ask students to imagine this number of people. Write 1250 000 on the board. Is imagining this number difficult? In order to help understand this number, ask students what they could find 1.25 million of to bring into the classroom. How can they prove they have 1.25 million of it?
After this, ask them to consider what a group of 1.25 million people would look like. How much space would they take up? Calculate together how many classrooms you would need to fit 1.25 million people in. Consider 1.25 million people compared to the population of Perth. (In 2007 the population of Perth was approximately 1.55 million).
Next Substitute Beijing for Vancouver. and examine the increase in homelessness.
Article example HERE
Read the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions report on the displacement of people throughout the world due to the Olympics HERE
Myths About Landing the Olympics
By Stefan Szymanski, The Washington Post
Sunday, October 4, 2009
LONDON -- So you didn't get the Games, Chicago. Relax. It's not as tough a break as you think. We Londoners should know. Watching the festivities in Copenhagen on Friday, I couldn't help but recall the International Olympic Committee's announcement in Singapore in 2005 that, to the astonishment of the world, our city had beaten Paris for the 2012 Summer Games prize. Four years later, the Parisians have come to terms with their loss, while U.K. taxpayers have learned to curb their enthusiasm for an event that is currently estimated to cost $15 billion, though many expect that price tag to go even higher. For the triumphant Rio citizens, there are many lessons about the burdens of hosting that you will have to learn for yourselves, but here's a head start.
1. The Olympics will pay for themselves.
Nope, they never do. The Olympics have always needed a public subsidy, but in recent years the cost has ballooned as the number of cities vying for the big prize has grown. This is no coincidence. More competition means brasher promises and bigger purses. Representatives of national Olympic committees, governments and other interest groups are fond of saying that the revenues from ticketing, broadcast rights, sponsorship and merchandising will cover the operating costs. This leaves out the cost of the Olympic infrastructure -- the stadium, velodrome, aquatic center and the rest. London is building a 12,000-seat handball arena. Most Brits don't even know what handball is. Add to that all the transportation that has to be created or enhanced to get an estimated 250,000 fans into and out of the Olympic site quickly and safely. Operating costs are the tip; infrastructure is the iceberg. Moreover, much of this infrastructure has limited value after the Games and will never generate much income. In 2007 the U.K. government announced that the real cost of the Games would be closer to $15 billion than the $4 billion they had initially promised. Olympic accounting is shrouded in mystery, but since Los Angeles in 1984, there have been no cases where the Games can show a net profit.
2. Winning the Games means a gold rush of jobs for the host city.
The truth is that the local economy doesn't get much of a boost while those shiny new athletic venues are being built. Many of the jobs created are filled by specialists who come in from outside -- to construct a BMX bicycle track, it helps to have built one before -- and they take their pay home with them. To the extent that local labor is tapped, suppliers are taken away from other projects in the area, raising costs in the process. It would be nice to think you could create an Olympic city by hiring an army of the unemployed, but mega-projects like this do not work like that.
3. The Olympics will boost local tourism.
For most foreign visitors, attending the Olympics is a proposition that costs thousands of dollars. Demand is just not that great. True, many foreigners and Olympics die-hards will come, but far more of the attendees will be locals taking the chance of a lifetime. And of those who do travel from abroad, many will be what's known as "time-switchers": people who would have come anyway but plan their trip to coincide with the Games. Tourist arrivals usually fall after the Olympic circus leaves town. When Athens hosted in 2004, Greece didn't see visitor numbers recover to their pre-Games level until two years later.
4. Playing host to the Olympics changes the landscape of a city forever.
Maybe, but it's not a legacy worth much. Athens has struggled with unused venues; the Beijing Bird's Nest is mostly empty. London is building an 80,000-capacity Olympic stadium for 2012 only to strip it down to 25,000 seats immediately after the Games. Even Sydney, which staged one of the best Games of recent decades, has torn down a number of venues. In the end, the cost of maintaining unused buildings is so high that demolition is often the only sane option. The Olympic Village does have some value after the fact. London will be selling off around 4,000 Olympic properties at a price that will more or less cover their costs. But for the most part, the athletic venues and the new transportation systems don't reshape a host city for years to come. The infrastructure carries a construction premium -- facilities must be built to time (contractors ruthlessly exploit this) and to the IOC specifications, which many not be what the city needs.
5. The Olympics inspire greater participation in sports.
In recent years concern about the obesity crisis has offered another crutch to bid-city boosters: The Olympics will make us more active and therefore healthier. It's hard not to be skeptical, though, about claims by any organization whose major sponsors are Coca-Cola and McDonald's that what it does is good for your health. We admire Usain Bolt, but we are not likely to go to the track and start sprinting because of the records he's broken. And when did you last watch a bout of Greco-Roman wrestling and say to yourself, "I fancy a go at that"?
It is true that many Olympic athletes were inspired by watching the Games, but most of these people had athletic talent to begin with. For everyone else, the effect is more likely to go in the opposite direction -- the Olympics can reduce participation in sports. Public subsidies that might have gone into boosting local facilities are diverted to the Games. In the U.K., national lottery funds traditionally devoted to local investment in sports facilities have been committed to funding the Olympics over the next 10 years.
Maybe it's for the best, though, that the Games don't actually inspire a generation of Olympic hopefuls and host-city boosters. As public debt continues to mount, the cost-effectiveness of hosting the Games will come under increasing scrutiny, and by 2020 the IOC might be struggling to find credible bidders.
Stefan Szymanski is a professor of economics at the Cass Business School at City University London and the author, most recently, of "Playbooks and Checkbooks: An Introduction to the Economics of Modern Sports."
'Stunning' increase in number
of Greater Vancouver homeless
373 per cent jump since 2002 count
Jack Keating, The Province
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Greater Vancouver's homeless crisis continues to grow at a "stunning" and "shocking" rate, with a 373-per-cent increase in street homelessness since 2002.
The number of homeless in Metro Vancouver is now approaching 3,000 -- there were at least 2,660 homeless people in Metro Vancouver on the official day of the count on March 11 -- according to a detailed report released yesterday.
Officials with the Greater Vancouver regional steering committee on homelessness, which commissioned the 2008 Metro Vancouver Homeless Count, were "distressed" by the increase in numbers.
"It's absolutely stunning, the increase in the homeless population in Metro Vancouver," said Laura Track, a housing campaigner with the Pivot Legal Society.
Meanwhile, NDP leader Carole James said the numbers "are shocking. I think it's another example of the neglect of the most vulnerable under [Premier] Gordon Campbell and the Liberals. We've seen these numbers steadily, since 2002, continue to grow."
Almost 75 per cent of the homeless were found on the streets and emergency shelters of Vancouver (more than 1,500) and Surrey (close to 400).
More than 100 homeless people were found in New Westminster as well as on the North Shore. Similar numbers were also found in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Maple Ridge, Burnaby and Langley.
"The provincial government slashed all sorts of social services at the beginning of its eight years in power," said Track. "And those cuts have had direct effects on homelessness and on increased poverty in the province."
The report's key findings include:
- Street homelessness increased by 373 per cent since 2002.
- The number of people who were homeless for a year or more rose by 62 per cent from 2005. Almost 50 per cent of homeless people found during the count had been homeless for a year or more.
- Native people, despite representing just two per cent of the population, comprise 32 per cent of the homeless, up from 30 per cent in 2005. Close to 45 per cent of homeless women and 41 per cent of unaccompanied homeless youth were native.
- The vast majority (84 per cent) of homeless people had health problems such as addiction (61 per cent), mental illness (33 per cent) and physical disability (31 per cent).
- The so-called working poor are being forced into emergency shelters.
Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman said more than 2,700 people have been assisted by outreach workers to find housing "as part of our increasing efforts to break the cycle of homelessness in British Columbia."
