Organisations from the UK, Swaziland, Japan and the Czech Republic have been nominated for this year’s Rhino Grassroots Rugby Award.
Rugby Academy Olymp Praha from the Czech Republic, Japan’s Sanix World Rugby Youth Tournament, Skrum of Swaziland and the UK’s Touraid are in the running to win the accolade celebrating the heroes of grassroots rugby.
Now in its third year, previous winners were Kampuchea Balopp (Cambodia, 2016) and Tag Rugby Trust (UK, 2015). Rhino CEO Reg Clark commented: “Through our global network we discover many great stories of people creating fantastic initiatives that use rugby as a tool to help communities and promote all the wonderful values of the sport we love.
“We began the Rhino Grassroots Rugby Award to celebrate the very best of those and this year’s job of narrowing down the worthy winners to just four was harder than ever. All four organisations are worthy of every accolade and it’s a shame we can only present one with the award.”
Due to be announced in mid-November, the four nominees are as follows:
RUGBY ACADEMY OLYMP
A Prague-based rugby club supported by the Czech Rugby Union and Minister of the Interior, Rugby Academy Olymp Praha is dedicated to getting people playing rugby – whatever their age. Uniquely, they also target adult beginners, both men and women, providing the training and confidence they need to play the sport.
ragbyolymp.cz
SANIX WORLD RUGBY YOUTH TOURNAMENT
For more than 20 years, the Sanix World Rugby Youth Tournament has been promoting youth rugby by bringing together sides from all over the world for an annual festival. Sides from 17 different countries have competed.
sanix-sports.com
SKRUM
SKRUM uses rugby as a tool to get across the vital message of HIV awareness in Swaziland. They have already visited more than 600 schools reaching more than 120,000 school children in a country with one of the highest rates of HIV in the world.
skrum.org
TOURAID
Touraid is a UK charity whose aim is to use rugby to help under-privileged children throughout the world. It does so by creating partnerships between UK schools and rugby clubs and disadvantaged communities abroad. They have organised 22 tours, bringing 800 players from the UK to support communities in 35 different countries.
For more information on the Rhino Grassroots Rugby Award or to nominate an organisation for 2018, please email info@rhinorugby.com
Lawrence Dallaglio and Rhino CEO Reg Clark present the 2016 award to Fred Hervouet of Kampuchea Balopp
