The Rationale of the ILO Youth Sport Program (YSP)

The development community looks at sport and development as conflicting parameters. In most cases development leaders perceive sport as a recreational toll rather than a value-based engine for socio-economic changes. The Youth Sport Program intends to put sport partners and sport values at the center of a process that allows development and sport institutions to assess their needs and to pull efforts, resources and capacities together in partnership to cope with these needs. The priority target is young women and men who need to acquire skills and capacities so that they are able to insert socially and economically. Social insertion is based on availability of services and an enabling environment based on equality of opportunities.

Sound dialogue and facilitation are basic instruments for a true needs assessment both at the national and local levels. It is a basic assumption of successful socio economic insertion through sport. Good program delivery will depend on it and partnerships can only be effective if the parties involved identify clearly the needs and express their common interests and objectives.

That is why needs assessment based on facilitation and dialogue is so important in the process of the YSP. Besides the ILO stands for tripartite social dialogue. It is the "raison d'être" of the organization since 1919 as also recognized by P. de Coubertin in 1922.

As a result of this exchange between the parties and expressed needs policy dialogue may come before the project activities are undertaken. Experience has showed that policy issues such as for example the legislative framework for youth employment and the mechanisms through which projects are channeled and funded and training for preparing the projects, are inter -related.

The project cycle embeds monitoring and evaluation. It must take into consideration the following areas: objectives, targets, mean of actions, activities, direct implementation, partnerships, and evaluation.

In this perspective, partnership which is the other face of the same coin should not be set up and monitored without a matrix that provides: the partners list (local, national and international), the contributions (financial, human resources, technical capacities and equipment) the reference to national policies and the basic indicators for evaluation which are simple: ownership, accountability and sustainability.

In fact, it would be redundant to work on new indicators for evaluation and impact of "sport/development oriented programs. Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) exist and they are assorted with indicators both at the international and national levels. The MDG's are the legacy of forty years of development efforts. It is an opportunity and a challenge to achieve them

by 2015.

The international community is committed to achieve the objectives of the MDG's. The sport community is part of this worldwide effort to improve the lives of 7 billion peoples. Sports honor these goals every day and have a natural interaction with the MDG's.

The development community one responsibility is to make sure that sport is seen for its human and social-economic value; thus, the need to acknowledge the mandate of the sports community, which is the development of the athlete and of the sport environment and games, that are relevant not only for competitive games but also for physical activities that are refreshing and constructive. The sport community wants to contribute to the development of sport and of the athletes worldwide.

Hence the opportunity to use a common framework by both the sport community and the development institutions to implement activities on agreed values and interests from different mandates and perspectives.