Malika Kons
Malika Kons
Having had not only good memories with physical education in secondary school, I discovered a totally different use of sport & play-based activities in my work for the Swiss Academy for Development (SA4D). Being sceptical at first, I experienced the positive impact of sport & play first hand in an education project in Nepal. Since then, I am striving for a structured and purposeful use of sport & play, embedded in the project design and alongside other approaches that have been proven useful in development projects.
A sociologist and cultural anthropologist by training, I started my career working in civic education in my native Germany. Since 2012, I have been working with the Swiss Academy for Development (SA4D), a centre of excellence for sport and development. At SA4D, we use sport & play to empower disadvantaged children and young people in Switzerland and internationally to become healthy, educated and employed members of their communities.
In my work as Deputy Director for SA4D, I have designed, managed, supervised, monitored and evaluated projects on four continents, mainly in the areas of education and employment. As part of this role, I have created M&E instruments and developed handbooks to be used by facilitators in non-formal education, early childhood development and entrepreneurship education, most of which use sport & play as a tool for teaching children and young people. I have also conducted workshops on different topics for field-level staff.
In addition to Germany and Switzerland, I have studied and/or worked in the Netherlands, Peru, Canada and Austria.