sportanddev: Critical for Sport Impact Fund and coalition to involve NGOs and grassroot actors

At the 2025 Finance in Common Summit (FiCS), sportanddev urged the coalition of actors scaling sport for development to ensure information and opportunity flows down to civil society.

Event video recording: Impact of Sport on Education, Gender Equality and Inclusion

The FiCS is an annual meeting of Public Development Banks and their partners to support common actions for climate change and sustainable development. This year’s Summit had an increased focus on sport, following the pledges to invest USD 10 billion in sport made at the Summit on Sport for Sustainable Development, on the eve of Paris 2024.

For the first time at FiCS, a Sport Investment Forum was held with a dedicated Sports, Arts & Culture Arena which featured activities and high level discussions. The Coalition for Sustainable Development through Sport (Coalition) elaborated on the strategy to invest USD 10 billion in community-based, inclusive and sustainable sports infrastructure and projects by 2030.

Further, the Coalition made a joint declaration and introduced a roadmap focusing on:

expanding financing for inclusive and sustainable sports infrastructure
harnessing major sporting events, such as the Milano Cortina 2026 Games and the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympics, to foster long-term development benefits
deploying innovative financial instruments and scaling investment in sport-for-development research

sportanddev call for equitable action and opportunity

The International Platform on Sport and Development (sportanddev) welcomes the efforts of the Coalition and its partners, and the commitments resulting from the Sport Investment Forum.

Dr Ben Sanders, Executive Director at sportanddev, said: “It is time to take sport for development (SFD) seriously – it is more than just a game. These commitments provide a real opportunity to reshape a more equitable sector (as the SFD sector is still unequal); strengthen capacity; scale for collective impact; and invest in proven organisations and approaches.”

sportanddev Executive Director Ben Sanders explaining the value of sport in achieving positive social outcomes at the recent @FinanceInCommon #FICS summit

View summary article 👉 https://t.co/CrwYmN5q5A #sportfordevelopment #sdgs #s4d pic.twitter.com/cf7ZHMIfnf
— sportanddev (@sportanddev) March 17, 2025

Sportanddev also urged public development banks (PDBs), development finance institutions (DFIs) and other stakeholders to recognise the work of civil society in sport and development, including NGOs and community-based organisations who are often under-resourced.

“Grassroots actors working against the odds are the true heroes of our sector. We welcome the high-level commitments and need to ensure that information and opportunity flows down to those who need it the most. As we say in South Africa: Sekunjalo ke nako – the time is now!”

sportanddev will continue to engage with the Coalition and partners - and share information so that actors at all levels of the SFD ecosystem are aware and can benefit from any opportunities.