Ruth Alvarez

Ruth Alvarez is an athlete from Special Olympics Panamá in the Latin America Region. Ruth participates in gymnastics. She has been involved in Special Olympics since 2014.

Ruth’s favorite part about Special Olympics is meeting new people and being able to work as a team.

Ruth is excited for the congress in Berlin. She is looking forward to meeting people from around the world, working together, as well as learning about their projects and their countries.

Ruth is employed at Special Olympics Latin America where she works as an Administrative Coordinator. Ruth also sells different things online. When Ruth isn’t working or competing in Special Olympics, she enjoys cooking, working out, as well as listening to music. Outside of Special Olympics, Ruth leads a Christian Youth Group.

Ruth says that being an athlete leader means being positive and being able to motivate others. It also means learning that one must lead with example, include people, respect others, and get to know them. Ruth says that being an athlete leader is being able to teach others that it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes, be willing to try again and as the Special Olympics oath says, “Let me win but if I can’t win let me be brave in the attempt”.

Ruth’s grant plan is to help other athletes identify their emotions and be able to understand and manage them in order to solve problems effectively. She will do this by giving a workshop on the module Understanding Emotions from the leadership skills curriculum. Ideally Ruth will give this workshop in person but she can adapt it to be held virtually for up to 20 athletes. She understands that emotional intelligence is a very important life skill which can help athletes to solve problems effectively.