SDP scholars identified critical shortcomings in "Deporte y Cambio Social," a program empowering girls through soccer, exploring power dynamics and offering improvement strategies.
SDP scholars have identified critical shortcomings related to neoliberalist tendencies from the Global North to the Global South. Deporte y Cambio Social was a short-term SDP program established through partnership between American and Mexican constituent groups aiming to empower girls and women through soccer. Through semi-structured, two-year retrospective interviews, the purpose of the present study was to explore cross-cultural understandings of power and intercultural power relations from the voices of Mexican and American stakeholders to offer reflective critique of, and generate participant-informed strategies for improving, the design and implementation SDP programs broadly.
Using thematic analysis from a critical constructivist orientation, the meanings generated from the data showed that Mexican and American participants similarly defined power and acknowledged power imbalances informed by a limiting project framework and a sociocultural-informed deference to Americans as experts. Strong, positive intercultural experiences between Mexican and American constituent groups were reported amid often unseen social biases that can be experienced abroad and perpetuated in SDP programs. Critical reflexivity, prolonged cultural preparation, longer-term engagement, and careful construction of SDP leadership teams and program participants were among the strategies informed by the data that were further interpreted to account for the complex realities of SDP programs.
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