New advocacy toolkit on sport for development and peace

The Commonwealth Youth Sport for Development and Peace Working Group has published a new toolkit that provides advice for young people on the skills and tools needed to advocate for SDP.

The CYSDP have created a youth advocacy toolkit to provide young people with advice about skills and tools to become advocates of SDP. The resource aims to enhance their ability to create awareness and influence decision-making.

In addition to helping youth become agents of change in their communities, this toolkit is geared towards enhancing the understanding of and support for sport and play’s role in achieving critical development and peace objectives.

The toolkit was launched at Marlborough House, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s headquarters on Tuesday 7 April during day-long celebrations of the second UN designated International day of Sport for Development and Peace.

The advice and resources provided in this toolkit have been developed through extensive research since 2013 as well as the experience and expertise of the CYSDP members, involving many edits, drafts and trial workshops.

We ensured the toolkit was trialled with young people involved in sport and/or participating in and coordinating SDP programmes. CYSDP members delivered pilot sessions to more than 50 young people ranging from 16-21 years old from India, Kenya, Trinidad and Tobago and Australia, including high school and university students, volunteers, athletes, coaches, administrators and referees.

Outcomes of pilot sessions

There was a greater understanding of sport for development and peace (sport for social change)
An increased number of positive connections made between youth beginning to understand the power of sport for social change, youth who have been engaged over a long period of time and professional advocates in various sectors including human rights lawyers
Advocacy messages developed were relevant to individual’s communities

‘’The CYSDP toolkit is a simple framework for the youth to use in coming up with unique strategies for youth sport programmes and SDP networking.’’ Henry Majale - MYSA deputy director and director of Sports and Leadership Academy

‘’Most of us lack the knowledge and approach to take us where we want to go. The CYSDP youth advocacy toolkit is timely in providing a platform for community transformation.’’ Mevis Kemunto - MYSA volunteer, Sports & Youth Rights project

The toolkit can be downloaded and used by any young person and the CYSDP also aims to deliver workshops on the advocacy toolkit at various events and platforms to build the capacity of youth working in SDP, and to promote SDP to the wider community. One platform that has been identified for a possible workshop is the Trinidad and Tobago International Sport Conference 2015, on 16 - 17 June 2015.