sportanddev and partners publish report on reshaping sport and development

The world faces a range of increasingly complex and interconnected challenges. Sport reflects, and contributes to, many of these challenges but can help tackle them. The sport for development and peace (SDP) sector has grown rapidly but also faces challenges.  

The sector is unequal across regions, gender, race, (dis)ability, socio-economic status etc. There is a resourcing challenge, with greater constraints than ever; a great diversity of initiatives but a lack of coordination and collective impact; while North driven, Anglo centric, neo-colonial approaches may cause an ‘own goal’ in SDP. There is limited understanding and research (especially at scale) on how sport can best contribute to sustainable change.  

Given the challenges, the International Platform on Sport and Development (sportanddev), launched a campaign on Reshaping Sport and Development in 2021 with our key founding partners. Activities have run from 2022-2024 and will influence the next long-term strategy of sportanddev as we seek to better serve our diverse and amazing global community. 

Read the report 

Our report summarises the campaign activities and deliverables and provides key insights on how to reshape sport and development to be more equitable, inclusive and impactful. 

• Read the report in English 

• Lire le rapport en français 

• Lea el informe en español

• إقرأ التقرير باللغة العربية

Call for articles 

We launched a public call for articles in English, French, Spanish and Arabic in May 2022. We received a total of 96 articles, making it our largest and most impactful campaign to date. Articles came from all six continents and from a range of sectors within and beyond sport. 

• Read all articles: English | French | Spanish | Arabic 

The following key themes and insights emerged from the articles received: 

• Strengthen focus on mental health and wellbeing 

• Inclusion: Intersectionality, disability, gender and sexuality 

• Time for redress: Race, indigeneity and equity 

• Human rights are non-negotiable, including safeguarding 

• Strengthen monitoring and evaluation and assess impact 

• Ensure good governance and collaborative partnerships 

• Quality coaching and safeguarding are essential 

Webinar 

We hosted a global webinar in September 2022, inviting stakeholders to hear from campaign partners and article authors on concrete steps for sport and development moving forward. The webinar was attended by over 190 people and received glowing feedback. 

Read more about the webinar on sportanddev | Watch the webinar on YouTube

Community consultations

sportanddev involved its diverse community in identifying key themes and priorities for reshaping sport and development. We invited our entire global community - over 600,000 unique annual users of our website, 10,000 registered individuals and 1,000 registered organisations – to contribute to the call for articles. We ran community consultations, including opportunities to input into the development of the upgraded sportanddev website which was launched in early 2023. We invited organisations within our community (and beyond) to apply to become the host of sportanddev, which concluded in sportanddev forming a strategic partnership with the International Sport and Culture Association. 

Next steps 

sportanddev has used the key themes identified through the campaign to strengthen our focus on reshaping sport and development, including ensuring that information, tools and resources are available in other languages, catering for under-represented regions and actors. We have launched our global website in English | Français | Español | .باللغة العربية  

We launched our massive open online course (MOOC) Sport for Sustainable Development in these same four languages, with over 7,000 learners engaged from 191 countries. 

The campaign does not end here. Insights will feed into our next long-term strategy in which we will engage key stakeholders and our global community. We will continue to champion greater access, inclusion and equity in sport for development and reshape a more diverse and democratic movement where all can be heard, including underrepresented actors. 

Thank you for joining us on this journey.