United We Stand: Tennis players lining up for UN

Tennis has long been a United Nations of sport, so it’s no surprise to see the United Nations turning to tennis as it looks for messengers to spread its humanitarian message.

Earlier this month, three more players – Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic, and Jie Zheng – were appointed UN ambassadors. They join an already impressive list of players who have worked with the UN, including Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, Venus and Serena Williams, Gustavo Kuerten and Tatiana Golovin.

The appointments of Jankovic and Ivanovic add further prestige to Serbian tennis’ fruitful season. Jankovic commemorated her new partnership with UNICEF at the Commonwealth Bank Tennis Classic in Bali last week when she and a luxury jeweler offered for auction a pearl necklace strung by Jankovic. A painting down by the world No. 3 was also put up for sale. Proceeds were to benefit UNICEF programs in Serbia and Indonesia and the organizations immunization campaigns.

Meanwhile, a continent away, Ana Ivanovic was being inaugurated as a UNICEF national ambassador for Serbia at a ceremony in a Belgrade primary school. She donated the CAD$11,000 she earned from a commercial shoot at the Rogers Cup in Toronto last month to the UNICEF “Schools without Violence” program.

The two Serbians will have a common goal of helping children in their native land, but Ivanovic will focus on improving the quality of children's education in Serbia, while Jankovic will turn her attention to children's rights.

The Russian made a $100,000 donation from her foundation to eight youth operations targeting the areas affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, particularly in Belarus, the Federal Republic of Russia, and the Ukraine. Sharapova also met with a group of children from the “Children of Chernobyl Foundation” in San Diego this summer.

Her first official mission will be next summer after Wimbledon when she travels to her former hometown of Gomel, a city just 80 miles north of Chernobyl. She says she is “excited but a bit nervous.”

While sidelined with injury last year, Serena Williams attended the UN Global Youth Leadership Summit in October and traveled to Senegal and Ghana to promote the summit’s goals. And in 2005, Gustavo Kuerten pledged to support children’s access to sport as part of a joint initiative between the ATP and UNICEF.

While these efforts center on the welfare of children, Jie Zheng, China’s first Grand Slam winner, is setting her sights on a different goal. She has been appointed a “Promoter of Gender Equality” with UNESCO, which is partnering with the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour to advance equal rights for women.

Other ambassadors for the program include Venus Williams and Tatiana Golovin, who have both joined the cause in the past year. Justine Henin, a UNESCO Champion for Sport since December, gave an anti-doping speech to an assembly of children this July.

"I am truly honored to be serving as a Promoter of Gender Equality, especially being the first one from China," Zheng said at a press conference in Beijing. "I take the job as a role model very seriously, and I am looking forward to helping young girls and women in my country and around the world to gain better opportunities to succeed in whatever they wish to do. Not only through my efforts as a tennis player, but also because of my passion for women's rights, I hope I can make a difference on this very important issue."

The hope is that the addition of these tennis stars will bring further attention to the UN’s global humanitarian programs. The most high-profile recruit has been Roger Federer, who was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in a ceremony in New York City in April 2006. Federer traveled to India last December to promote his UN cause, meeting with school children and visiting an orphanage for tsunami-affected children.

Federer was also present alongside 500 other elite athletes and world leaders as the 2005 “Report on the International Year of Sport and Physical Education” was made public to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

In addition to their UN efforts, Federer, Sharapova, the Williamses, Kuerten and Jankovic also have their own charitable foundations.