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About inherent transformative strength: Improving coaching standards in the Global South
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Sport for Development may empower communities to find their own solutions, if the values of our programmes are freely accepted and intrinsically valued by all participants.

Improving coaching standards in the Global South requires local partnerships and locals integrated in the decision making process. Education and sport are normative environments where a consensus about the means needs to be found; thus cooperation is of utmost importance.

We need to understand sport as a part of a greater whole, a tool that can, but does not have to be used to fulfil objectives which are both closely related to other development efforts and need-based. The main risk any development activity faces is to misunderstand the facilitative nature that has to underlie each doing.

Projects are usually externally funded and thus constitute a third party that is meant to support, empower and assist. In particular, a Western norm of paternalism has no space. When we want to facilitate, we cannot rely on our own cultural and social belief and value systems. We need to respect differences of each group, each individual and rely on their inherent strength to find a solution that fits their specific situation.

That answer may not be perceived as being ideal from our perspective, yet we must not disregard the appropriateness of it, because that would diminish self-respect and threaten our task to empower. We need to assume a voluntary agreement to the social norms our programme wants to establish; the moral value of sport should be governed by need to be adopted freely and intrinsically valued by all participants.

 

Ingo Steffgen


An Academic since 2002, Ingo now specialises in Sport for Development and Peace, studying for a Masters in Sustainable Peace through Sport; a joint initiative of the International University of Monaco, University for Peace, and Monaco-based NGO Peace & Sport.

 

 

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