The Birth of OSE

“Putting the Human Being at the heart of sport.”

Over the course of this quest, a second dream gradually took shape. Broader. More demanding. Understanding was no longer enough. I now wanted to contribute.

I am on the ascent.

Yet I was still missing one essential experience. It came from a world I never expected: Rotary.

For more than thirty years, I have been discovering there a different way of serving others.

For more than fifty years, the Student Exchange Program has enabled tens of thousands of young people to spend a school year abroad, to better understand other cultures and become citizens of the world.

This experience was about to change, even further, the way I looked at sport.

Our club welcomed a young Mexican. Íñigo Bultrón Carrasco, whom everyone called “Gogo”.

A promising athlete, he arrived in France ranked 65th in his country.

We welcomed him into a host family, supported him throughout his stay, and enrolled him at CA Balma, today part of Grand Toulouse Athlétisme.

The first training sessions were extremely difficult. At the end of every session, he was sick with exhaustion. But he always came back.

By the end of his stay, he had gone up two trouser sizes, joined the group of the ten best Mexican athletes, and was on his way to the Pan American Games.

Beyond his performances, we had just contributed to the growth of a young athlete, through the meeting of families, a club, a culture and his own personal journey.

Little by little, this intuition took shape.

Rotary's exchange model could not simply be copied as it was.

Sport has its own culture, its own demands, clubs, competitions and educational purpose. A new model had to be imagined.

A programme in which young people would leave not only to practise their sport, but to grow as individuals, discover another culture, and become true ambassadors.