Crouch, touch ... engage | ‘Sport has the power to change the world’

I never met Nelson Mandela, I'm not a South African, and I haven't even read Long Walk to Freedom, and yet like millions of others around the world my life has been touched by the words and actions of this great man.

I suppose in some respects that is what separates the true global statesmen such as JFK, Gandhi and Churchill from their peers – the way in which their influence has somehow transcended the world of politics and instead helped to define the culture, or zeitgeist, of an age.

For those of us working in sport, Mandela's words and actions during the 1995 Rugby World Cup was the watershed when the wider public for the first time really understand what was meant by the concept that sport, in his own words, had "the power to change the world".

That iconic moment when he appeared wearing Francois Pienaar's number six shirt had not just a dramatic psychological impact on his own country but reverberated around the world and set the stage for organisations such as Laureus World Sports Foundation, Beyond Sports and the Global Rugby Collaborative, to show how sport could be a medium to effect social change.

In Hong Kong at that time a few inspired police officers were trying a different approach to tackling juvenile delinquency in Tuen Mun, coaching boxing to young offenders on the roof of a police station. This initiative grew into the charity Operation Breakthrough and in 2005 its success was recognised by Laureus who adopted it as one of their global "Sport for Good" projects.

Three years ago Laureus Academy member Morne du Plessis brought a group of youngsters from Soweto – Mandela's spiritual home – to Hong Kong to play rugby with the Breakthrough kids and experience our Sevens tournament.