Sport for development
Project description
Title: Sport for development – Brazil
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Brazil
Lead executing agency: Ministry of Sports
Overall term: 2012 to 2016
Context
Sport, in particular football, has a high profile in Brazil and enjoys great popularity among children and young people – both boys and girls alike. So football and educational sports programmes offer an opportunity to reach a large sector of the population that is fundamental to development processes and exert a positive influence on them.
Following the 2014 FIFA World Cup and with an eye on the forthcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, there is now great potential to demonstrate the relevance of sport for development to a wider public in Brazil and Germany. Decision-makers in the spheres of sport and politics, from Brazil and around the world, can also see for themselves the positive impact that can be achieved by integrating Sport for Development approaches into existing sports promotion programmes for children and young people.
Objective
Children and young people receive support in the areas of health, education and violence prevention as a result of improvements to the sports education methods of Brazilian partner organisations.
Approach
Brazil offers a wide range of potential partners with considerable interest in getting involved in the project and the ability to bring valuable experience to the development of joint methodologies. These include the Brazilian Ministry of Sports and various non-governmental organisations such as streetfootballworld gGmbH, Bola pra Frente and the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC). The German Football Association (Deutsche Fußball-Bund e.V.) and the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) are also partners in the project.
In collaboration with its partners, the project develops and implements innovative training concepts for sports education activities with children and young people. In addition to teaching social and personal skills, the focus of these sports education activities is on health, the environment, gender equality and violence prevention. By providing training for local sports coaches, teaching staff, social workers and pre-school teachers, these issues are integrated into existing sports programmes. The primary focus will be on football initially. But with an eye on the forthcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games, there are already plans to expand methodologies to include other sports.
In addition, the measures will stimulate dialogue between sport and youth policy, academics and organised fan groups and in so doing promote civil society involvement and develop approaches to violence prevention.
Results
A preliminary pilot phase saw the development of age-specific methodologies and training materials to integrate the topics of health, education and violence prevention into sports programmes. Around 500 coaches and educators received training at one-week workshops. They now use sports education activities to provide teaching on topics such as health, the environment, gender equality and violence prevention through sport in over 50 institutions in all regions of Brazil.
Some of these specially trained sports coaches led football camps for over 2,000 children and young people at several of the venues during the FIFA Football World Cup. The camps were visited by German Federal Chancellor Merkel, German Federal Minister of the Interior de Maizière and UN Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace Willi Lemke.
The Football World Cup also established the framework for a conference entitled ‘Moving the Goal Posts – International Sports Events and Sustainability’, and for a fan forum jointly organised with the Brazilian Ministry of Sports and the National Secretariat of Youth, the German Fan Project Coordination Office (KOS) and streetfootballworld. The forum served to promote an exchange on socio-educational fan activities between Germany and Brazil.
With the involvement of key stakeholders, lessons learned from the pilot phase are currently being processed with a view to long-term integration into Brazilian and international programmes.