SPORT 1913 - 2013

part one_CHAPTER 3

countries and achieve personal goals, we believe that all citizens should enjoy the benefits of development through sport. But as we look around our societies, only a minority of young people has access to quality programs of sports and physical activity. In disadvantaged communities, opportunities are rare. Many social ills facing our brothers and sisters today— drug dependency, senseless violence, despondency and defeatism—stem from the lack of opportunities to develop themselves. Sport can help.

‘sport for good’ that dates back to the very ori- gins of modern sport, it differs from earlier efforts in its entrepreneurial youth leadership, its preference for non-governmental organiza- tions, its focus on individual growth as a strat- egy of development, and its willingness to intervene in some of the poorest and most violence-prone areas of the world. SDP seeks to enhance basic education, child and mater- nal health, gender equality, preventive educa- tion about HIV/AIDS and increasingly recon- ciliation and peace-building, especially in the Global South. Perhaps the best known exam- ple is the athlete-led NGO Right to Play, which enriches the lives of children and youth in refugee camps in some 22 countries through sport. But there are many others. In the for- mer Yugoslavia, the Caucasus and the Middle East, the Open Fun Football Schools (2009; and Udsholt and Nicolajsen, 2011) bring chil- dren and youth from divided communities together in common activities in an effort to overcome prejudice and discrimination and teach tolerance, respect and the principle of equality. In west African countries torn by civil war, the UNICEF coordinates a number of non-governmental organizations that uses sport as part of the very difficult task of re- integrating child soldiers into ‘normal’ or civil society, through education and the values of rule- and respect-based sport (Dyck 2011). Some of the very best programs are South-to- South. The Nairobi-based Mathare Youth Sports Association, which encourages educa- tion and environmental responsibility

through soccer, especially for girls and young women (Brady and Khan 2002), sends teams of leaders throughout eastern and southern Africa. The Cuban EIEFD trains coaches from more than 50 countries in the Global South to create community-based sport and recreation programs in marginalized neighbourhoods— at Cuba’s expense (Huish 2011). SDP grew out of the changed conditions created by the end of the Cold War, especially the triumph of neo-liberal ideas and the boost they brought to individual entrepreneurship. With the simultaneous fall of apartheid, southern African sports leaders who previ- ously asked activists to say ‘no’ to sporting links with South Africa asked them to say ‘yes’ to sport development and help the new post- apartheid South Africa and the ‘front-line’ states of southern Africa (which had also been significantly damaged by the long struggle) to create accessible and inclusive sports systems. A new generation of athlete leaders sought to bring the benefits of what they knew best— sports—to those whose lives had been devas- tated by war, disease and famine. In 1994, Right to Play (as Olympic Aid back then) was established in response to the Serbian shelling of former Winter Olympic city Sarajevo at the time of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics. That same year, athletes competing at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria signed a statement drafted by Canadian athletes, which in part said that Because of the extraordinary opportun­ ity we have enjoyed to represent our

Their endorsement spurred new programs in many Commonwealth countries, such as the Commonwealth Sport Development Program launched by Canada (Kidd forthcoming.) Initially, the new programs focused on sport development, the creation and strength- ening of opportunities for high performance training and competition, and capacity build- ing within national sports administration. Most sport programs of international assis- tance today, such as the IOC’s Olympic Soli- darity, still concentrate on sport develop- ment. But some sport leaders began to realize that if sport development was to reach more a tiny group of outstanding athletes, it could not occur without broad social development, that is, it is impossible to create safe, sustain- able organized sport for large numbers of children and youth without safe and support- ive social conditions in the society as a whole. So they turned their attention to how sport could address the most urgent challenges fac-

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