The UN refugee agency recently joined some of Ireland's finest athletes as they were fitted out in Dublin with their competition gear for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. UNHCR was at the Olympic Council of Ireland's (OCI) headquarters to promote the "Giving is Winning" programme, a joint project with the International Olympic Committee to encourage athletes and national Olympic committees to give surplus sportswear to refugees worldwide. The initiative was first launched for the Athens Olympics in 2004, when more than 30,000 items were collected to support sports among young refugees in places such as Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Eritrea, Kosovo and Tanzania. The OCI is shipping 400 items of surplus sports clothing to refugees in Georgia this month. The clothes will join a larger shipment to the Caucasus nation to support sports activities among some 1,100 refugees from Chechnya and 250,000 internally displaced Georgians. The project offers "a fantastic opportunity to put surplus gear to a good use," said long-distance race walker Jamie Costin, a veteran of the Sydney 2000 games. Seeing Israeli and Palestinian Olympic athletes walking together has convinced him that conflicts can be solved. "If it can happen in the Olympic village, it can happen elsewhere," Costin said. Read the full story at UNHCR The UN Refugee Agency