ESPN Highlights Humanitarian Efforts at 2020 ESPYS

June 26, 2020

As part of Sunday’s 2020 ESPYS ceremony, the Sports Humanitarian Awards, honored several inspirational individuals with key awards including the Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award. 

The Sports Humanitarian Awards, which typically are handed out during the week of the ESPYS, were given out on various ESPN programs, with a few featuring on the ESPYS telecast. 

Among the evening’s honors was the Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award which celebrates the legendary sports icon's commitment to leadership and service, and honors high school and college-aged students who, like Billie Jean King, use sports to improve their communities. Honorees will either receive a one-time college scholarship or direct a grant to an eligible nonprofit aligned with their work.

The honorees for the 2020 Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award: 

• Joel Apudo. Joel manages a local soccer club in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta - a historically Black community plagued by blight and disinvestment. Apudo's goal is to provide local kids an opportunity to access after-school resources to increase the physical and mental health of those involved with the program. 

• Batouly Camara. A graduate of the University of Connecticut with a master's degree in Sports Management, Batouly founded Women and Kids Empowerment (W.A.K.E.), a nonprofit that uses basketball to educate, equip and empower young girls by providing scholarships, elite training and life skills development.

• Ally Friedman. Inspired from her experiences in i-tri, an inclusive, community-based nonprofit program that fosters self-respect, personal empowerment, self-confidence and positive body images for adolescent girls, Ally Friedman created a program called THE BALL - Tennis, Health, Empowerment, Building Attitudes, Lifetime Lessons - to instill passion for sport and empowerment to young girls in her hometown of East Hampton, N.Y.

• Javonn Islar. Javonn aspires to positively impact his community of Brownsville, Brooklyn through the game of basketball to break down the divides in his community through his involvement in PeacePlayers - an organization that uses the power of sports to unite, educate and inspire young people to create a more peaceful world by offering sport programming, peace education, and leadership development to those living in communities in conflict.
• Chelsea Quito. Chelsea is a first-generation Ecuadorian American residing in the South Bronx - a community surrounded by violence, high poverty, drugs and homelessness. Quito paved a path forward for herself by joining New York City Football Club's City in the Community Foundation.
• Elijah Murphy and Niah Woods. Elijah and Niah are two of the nearly 300 NCAA Division I athletes from four colleges in Washington D.C. working with The Grassroot Project, which leverages the excitement, relatability, and popularity of sports to provide much-needed health literacy and social empowerment programs to D.C. youth.

Later on in the program, Maryam Shojaei, who mounted a campaign -- first anonymously and later publicly -- that led to Iran allowing women to attend men's soccer matches, was honored with the Stuart Scott ENSPIRE Award.

Women had been banned from watching men's games since shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, with only a few exceptions made for small groups on rare occasions. Shojaei, whose brother Masoud Shojaei is the captain of the men's national team, initially criticized the ban on social media anonymously. She then started a five-year battle to allow women to see matches live in her country.

Maryam was also honored at the Beyond Sport Global Awards in 2019 with the Sport for Human Rights Award in partnership with Equality League. 

The ESPYS show was broadcasted on television nationwide throughout the U.S., hosted by WNBA Champion and Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird, Olympic Gold Medalist and OL Reign wing Megan Rapinoe and Super Bowl Champion and Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson.

The ESPYS help to raise awareness and funds for the V Foundation for Cancer Research, the charity founded by ESPN and the late basketball coach Jim Valvano at the first ESPYS back in 1993. ESPN has helped raise close to $116 million for the V Foundation over the past 27 years. 

ESPN is an Official Supporter of the Beyond Sport Global Awards and the International Media Partner for Beyond Sport. 

Beyond Sport’s sister company, thinkBeyond, is proud to support the Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award program.