Unified sports is a separate category of various sports with different rules. Athletes with and without intellectual disabilities play together in one team. Special Olympics believes strongly in social integration and inclusion through sports, by playing on the same team.

Victory does not only mean winning the game, but also the social inclusion of mental disabled players through sports. The problem?

In Belgium “Unified Sports” is still very unknown. Next to the problem of being unknown, we knew that people and sports clubs are reluctant to include athletes with a mental disability into a training or match. Our special athletes didn't get the chance to experience Play Unified.

Objective: we not only needed to inform people about Play Unified, but also convince them to go and play their first unified game, not out of pity, but out of mutual love for the game.

It all started with 6 challenges, executed in 4 outdoor stunts and 2 online videos. All the athletes shared their challenge. The public was charmed by the boldness of the special athletes and pressured their heroes to participate. Within 24 hours all 7 athletes accepted the challenge and we had managed to explain the concept of #playunified to the Belgian people.

In the next months we kept the conversation going by creating social shareable stunts to engage people (eg, national coach of the Red Devils called 8 unknown special athletes at the official press conference, we created a gigantic tifo in Anderlecht’s football arena) and by making a media highlight of every Unified Game. With each game played, #playunified generated more content, more people talking about it and getting convinced to participate. Because, thanks to social media reach of our sports heroes everyone could experience the joy of Playing Unified.