Sport for development and social business

The webinar was part of a series of interactive virtual events geared towards sport for development organizations, with topics ranging from gender identity and sexual orientation in sports programming to social business and earned income revenues to policy making and advocacy.

A highlight of the webinar was the insights shared by the diverse group of speakers, all practitioners working to secure different sources of income for their sport for development programmes and initiatives. To understand the current landscape for sport for development organizations in terms of fundraising in the times of COVID, Rahul Bissoonauth from Oaks Consultancy opened the webinar with a presentation on the state of fundraising for the sport for development sector. From his presentation, it was evident that sport for development organizations are feeling the effects of a reduction in grants and funding opportunities, leading many to look for innovative ways of securing funds for their programmes and operations.

The following speakers provided the audience with concrete examples of ways they were able to bring in earned income, deal with different levels of challenges and test out new solutions in the past year:

• Yoko Youssouf, Yunus Sports Hub, Programme Manager
• Cyndi Mendoza, I AM WATER, Impact Manager
• Pedro Salazar, Amigos del Mar, Founder
• Rachel May, Mhor Outdoors, Founder
• Andreza Salguiero, Love.Futbol, Partnership Manager
• Jan van Hövell, KLABU, Founder
• Daniel Kamerino, KLABU, Secretary clubhouse Manager

Following the presentations, attendees were invited to further discuss the topics in relation to their own organizations / social businesses in smaller breakout rooms. The breakout rooms explored how their organizations and others were able to bring in earned incomes, challenges around funding models and solutions moving forward.

We are excited to announce the updates about our upcoming webinar on 4 March in celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8th. The webinar will cover sports for development policymaking and advocacy. Speakers include: Kalyani Subramanyam of Naz Foundation, Maria Bobenrieth of Women Win, Jennifer Cooper of UN Women, Jean-Claude Rugigana of Sport4Change Media and Thuba Sibanda of Physically Active Youth Namibia.

The webinar will aim to respond to the following questions:

• What are the systemic bottlenecks we need to address in policy making and advocacy in Sports for Development?
• What are examples of policy and advocacy work in gender and sport for development?
• How can we work together to create communities of knowledge and power to influence policies?

Don’t forget to register before 1 March!