Lesson learned

Lesson learned and other development perspectives

The institutional shift that the YSP and its common framework have provided, is quite impressive in Albania where the newly appointed director for Sport for All from the Ministry of Youth and Sport decided to benefit from the network of sport and development partners supported by the UN Country Team

In Mozambique, the Ministry of Youth and Sport started to work on cross cutting issues such as girls' education, skills training for youth and HIV prevention with other Ministries such as Labor, Tourism and Industry and Health and explored new venues for collaboration. Private sponsors decided to become partners for the rehabilitation of infrastructures using the Common Framework to share knowledge and ensuring a good monitoring and evaluation of the activities.

As indicted already the matrix for partnership development links properly to the national development strategies and to the Common Country Analysis (CCA) and UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) as well as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) with the World Bank and the community of donors. This is an opportunity for sport to be mainstreamed into development for its values, life skills and technical resources.

Every opportunity to access local needs towards the development of a teaching model and modules is being explored. As an outgrowth of international conferences, networking, research and processing information the discovery is that the contents of sport changes people's lives and creates synergies and activities that were dormant.

A curriculum for students, coaches as well as social workers is under preparation with a network of universities for leadership through sport to deal with socio-economic challenges. This initiative is based on the above field applications. From the above short analysis some preliminary conclusions can be driven by categories:

Conclusions

I. Sport and development and sport and recreation: too far to bridge

  • Sport and development are too broad concepts. Trying to constantly bridge the two is a risky exercise, which may soon become unproductive. It would be better to select the issues that need to be mainstreamed.
  • The above mentioned field experiences are indicating concrete ways to address concrete problem issues. As a result of this, sport and development become: social insertion of youth through sport; job opportunities in the sport sector; new job categories in the sport sector; training of youth for social hange, inserting disabled through sport.
  • The recreational aspect of sport is sometime overemphasized. Thus, the inability to reinforce sport as a real human and socio economic development need.

II. Respect of different mandates and need for partnerships

  • Sport institutions are different from the social partners and from the development agencies.
  • The two groups have different mandates so partnerships are key to develop activities and policies together.
  • Sport partners have very good partnerships examples. Partnership in sport is a good collaborative framework to carry out programs
  • The world of development can benefit from the sport partnerships, coaching athletes, and exchanges as well as sport event management.
  • A common framework is meant to take into consideration the mandate of sport actors, on one side and the one of the development actors, on the other side.

III. Policies and projects

  • A project approach can no longer be exempted from a link with a broader policy framework. Policy setting is as important as project and operational activity.
  • Both policies and projects depend on the needs of the constituents in the field.

IV. Issues to be addressed and strong cooperation

  • Women leadership is an issue and it should be addressed systematically in specific facilitation/training.
  • Governance and transparency is also an issue for both sport institutions and development institutions. There is room for further cooperation.
  • Coaching is often time seen only from the sport development point of view but it should be also naturally developed as a social service to the community.
  • Sport activities create jobs well beyond the sport infrastructures and the sport events. There is a need to capture this opportunity for new jobs and services as the Senegal case is showing.

V. Resource more than funding

  • The Sport Federations constitute a good example of standard setting (see rules for competition) and of a service provider, like the IOC.
  • The federations and human and technical resources not be confused with funding.
  • The assumption that sport is only linked to money and funding is wrong and sidetracking. It would not be a genuine way to build partnerships with sport actors.