I believe that exchanges through sports in which all people are treated as equals -- whether they have intellectual disabilities or not -- and the joy felt in competing together are more important than winning or losing.
And more people mutually understanding each other’s differences and accepting one another will bring us all greater joy and allow us to create a completely new world.
Special Olympics athletes, in each of their disciplines, all want to become better. Toyota’s high quality, efforts to continuously improve, and challenges for innovation that have supported its growth complement the important elements that we want to deliver to the world through sports.
We will never cease to wish for achieving a world without differences open to all people.
Welcoming Toyota as a Global Partner, I am thrilled to the heart that we will be able to take up the challenge of achieving this vision together.
I am sure that the more than 5 million Special Olympics athletes throughout the world share this same desire.
Nothing is impossible. By uniting our strengths, I believe that we are building a fair and fun future.
Mr. Shriver is a graduate of Yale University and holds a PhD in education from the University of Connecticut. He has undertaken various forms of research and activities as an educationist and has served as the chairman of the International Board of Directors of the Special Olympics since 1996. He is also involved in filmmaking.
Originating in a sporting event hosted by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a younger sister of a former US President, J.F.Kennedy in 1962, it became the “Special Olympics” in 1968
© Special Olympics Nippon
My heart is filled with deep appreciation for the Special Olympics’ having accepted Toyota as a Global Partner.
When I was a university student, I encountered field hockey. After that, it seems that field hockey was all I did day in and day out.
Having been born with the name “Toyoda”, I was often viewed with bias. I had always wanted others to see the real me. But it was only when playing sports that people would look at me as “Akio Toyoda, the human being”. People treated me like just another guy on the team. Sports, in which people of various characters compete for the same goal, have the power to build a society in which people have respect for each other. Encountering sports became a catalyst for me to change my own way of living and thinking, and I feel that it has now even changed how I relate to others.
As Chairman Shriver has said, the Special Olympics is an invitation to all people. I believe that Toyota has been granted an invitation to become a team in which there are no lines of division, where every-one’s differences are seen as individuality and where there is mutual respect.
I want to achieve a world that is open to all people and that has no lines of division. If each of us sincerely and with real intention thinks so, I am confident that we can come closer to a world in which all people can experience the joy of freedom of movement, in other words mobility for all.
Mr.Toyoda is a graduate of Keio University and holds an MBA from Babson College. After working for an investment bank in the United States he joined Toyota Motor Corporation, becoming president in 2009. During university, he was an active member of his school’s field hockey club and was selected as a member of the Japanese national men’s field hockey team.
Toyota has more than 30 years of history of Special Olympics activities in the United States of America. It started in1986 with the staff working in the US helping with the activities of Special Olympics Southern California. Toyota became an official partner of the 2015 Special Olympics Summer World Games in Los Angeles.