Proposal of milestones to map and understand the uses of sport for development and peace

Abstract

Physical activities and sport have been used to serve multiple international development issues since 2000. Football matches are organized to build social peace between divided populations, sports activities are offered to bring young people back to school, and/or sports tournaments are organized to regain possession of territories that have been contested and affected by armed conflicts. Although current research offers a variety of perspectives on sport for development based on several scientific disciplines, many questions remain unanswered. In particular, researchers are questioning the uses in which sport is implemented, the forms that sport takes in the context of development, and the goals that are targeted through sport, such as education, health, gender equality, reduced inequality and peace, among others. This chapter aims to clarifying the uses, forms, features and purposes of sport that international, national, regional or local organizations set up on the field. We present a model with two milestones (why and how), levers and mechanisms to help practitioners to position themselves in SDP, as well as for researchers to map the mechanisms of using sport to serve development, and more particularly by focusing on the sustainable development goals established by the United Nations on different scales.

Marchando desde una comunidad en Bogotá hasta los Juegos Olímpicos:

“…El DDP se ha definido como: "el uso intencionado del deporte, la actividad física y el juego para alcanzar objetivos específicos de desarrollo en países de ingresos bajos y medios y en comunidades desfavorecidas de zonas de ingresos altos" (Richards et al, 2013), que incluye: "todas las formas de actividad física que contribuyen a la aptitud física, el bienestar mental y la interacción social, como el juego, la recreación, el deporte organizado o competitivo y los deportes y juegos autóctonos" (United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Sport for Development and Peace, 2003). Desde entonces, estas definiciones han sido ampliamente adoptadas por los actores e investigadores del DDP (Schulenkorf y Adair, 2014;Webb y Richelieu, 2015), aunque algunos autores han propuesto vías más concretas para definir y operacionalizar el DDP (Gadais, Favier-Ambrosini, et al, 2021).…”

A Method for Conducting Preliminary Analysis of the Nature and Context of Sport for Development and Peace Projects in Fieldwork Research: An Illustration With a Malagasy Non-Governmental Organization

“…However, more empirical studies are still needed to bridge the gap between the theory and practice (Welty Peachey and Cohen, 2015 ; Gadais, 2019 ) and several scholars have highlighted the need to better assess the efficacy of sports to influence development or peace (Chawansky, 2014 ). As such, theory-building has been limited in this area, from both the theory-to-practice and practice-to-theory perspectives (Lyras and Welty-Peachey, 2011 ; Schulenkorf, 2012 ; Coalter, 2013 ; Edwards, 2015 ), even if the authors have proposed milestones to begin to fill this gap (Gadais et al, 2021b ).…”

Refugees children and youth social skills education in football activities

“…Football activities are organized not only to create social peace, but also for children and youth to successfully integrate and return to school (Gadais et al, 2021).…”