Us­ing sport as a tool to ad­dress at-risk youth is not about find­ing the next Dwight Yorke, Bri­an Lara, Anisa Mo­hammed, Keshorn Wal­cott, De­bra O’Con­nor, George Bovell, Jizelle Sa­landy, Akeem Stew­art, to name a few.

It is about "in­ten­tion­al­i­ty." To tru­ly trans­form lives, sport must be used as a de­lib­er­ate ped­a­gog­i­cal tool, a "hook" that leads to holis­tic de­vel­op­ment rather than just a way to burn off steam. In oth­er words, mere­ly throw­ing/kick­ing a ball in­to a group of "at-risk" youth is not enough.

The 2024 (Au­gust) Copen­hagen Con­sen­sus Con­fer­ence (Re­search from the 2024 Copen­hagen Con­sen­sus Con­fer­ence (https: www.sdu.dk/en/om-sdu) sug­gests that the "mag­ic" of sport de­pends on spe­cif­ic vari­ables. It is not the phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty it­self that changes be­hav­iour, but the psy­choso­cial en­vi­ron­ment cre­at­ed around it.

Key Plan­ning Vari­ables for Sport for De­vel­op­ment:

· The Coach-Men­tor Re­la­tion­ship: The most crit­i­cal vari­able is the coach. The cur­rent lit­er­a­ture em­pha­sis­es that coach­es must tran­si­tion from "drill sergeants" to men­tors who pro­vide emo­tion­al sup­port and cre­ate "au­ton­o­my-sup­port­ive" en­vi­ron­ments. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the every­one is a ‘coach’ syn­drome can be an­ti­thet­i­cal to­ward build­ing a sound, holis­tic ath­lete-coach re­la­tion­ship.

· Life Skills In­te­gra­tion: Pro­grammes suc­ceed when they use "in­ten­tion­al­i­ty." This means ex­plic­it­ly teach­ing trans­fer­able skills such as con­flict res­o­lu­tion, re­sist­ing peer pres­sure, and self-ef­fi­ca­cy through play. This, in turn, re­quires the util­i­sa­tion of skilled per­son­nel such as sport psy­chol­o­gists, so­cial work­ers, and so­ci­ol­o­gists. It would not be sur­pris­ing if many Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tions [NSOs] do not have sport for de­vel­op­ment as one of their key or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ob­jec­tives.

· The "Third Space" Ef­fect: For at-risk youth, the sports field or court serves as a safe "third space" (sep­a­rate from home and school) where they can forge a new iden­ti­ty away from the la­bels of "delin­quent" or "strug­gling stu­dent." Some­times, these ‘third spaces’ can be detri­men­tal if the pavil­ion, wash­rooms or spaces un­der the pavil­ion are used for ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.

Glob­al lessons

The ap­pli­ca­tion of these plan­ning vari­ables varies by ge­og­ra­phy, cul­ture, eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics, but the core prin­ci­ples re­main uni­ver­sal.

· Glob­al North: "Gen­er­a­tion 2026" (North Amer­i­ca). The FI­FA World Cup 2026 in Cana­da, Mex­i­co, and the USA is the first ma­jor sport­ing event [MSE] to re­quire hu­man rights com­mit­ments from the host coun­tries dur­ing the bid process.

Gen­er­a­tion 2026 is fo­cus­ing on "child safe­guard­ing" and "youth-in­clu­sive" ur­ban plan­ning in the cities of New York, New Jer­sey, Toron­to, and Guadala­jara, fo­cus­ing on so­cial in­te­gra­tion for mi­grant youth, through soc­cer [foot­ball] to build "so­cial cap­i­tal" and bridge the lan­guage gap for those at risk of dis­en­gage­ment from school. https://www.sporthu­man­rights.org/what-we-do/gen­er­a­tion-2026-ad­vanc­ing-safer-youth-in­clu­sive-sports

· Glob­al South: "Line Up Live Up" (Africa & Latin Amer­i­ca). The Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC) Line Up Live Up pro­gramme is “based on strong ex­ist­ing ev­i­dence that life-skills train­ing, de­liv­ered by trained train­ers, can of­fer an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty for youth to in­crease their so­cial and emo­tion­al com­pe­ten­cies and move away from in­volve­ment in vi­o­lence, crime, or drug use.”

While recog­nis­ing sport “is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a pre­ven­tion tool, by in­cor­po­rat­ing life skills, such as in­creas­ing self-aware­ness and cop­ing with emo­tions, in phys­i­cal train­ing, it has the po­ten­tial to be­come a pow­er­ful ve­hi­cle to ad­dress im­por­tant risk fac­tors for crime and vi­o­lence, es­pe­cial­ly among youth.” Suc­cess­es have been re­port­ed in South Africa and Brazil with mea­sured sig­nif­i­cant de­creas­es in ag­gres­sive be­hav­iour and drug use among par­tic­i­pants. https://www.un­odc.org/do­hade­c­la­ra­tion/en/news/2021/01/un­od­cs-new-line-up-live-up-pub­li­ca­tion-un­veils-four-years-of-da­ta-and-re­search--show­cas­ing-sport-as-a-crit­i­cal-tool-for-youth-crime-pre­ven­tion.html#:~:text=Based%20on%20self%2Dreport­ing%20da­ta,in%20en­sur­ing%20a%20con­ducive%20cli­mate.

The ele­phant in the room of good in­ten­tion

There are sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges that must be ad­dressed for suc­cess:

1. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty: Gang wars can­not stop with a six-week tour­na­ment. Many pro­grammes suf­fer from "short-ter­mism," in which fund­ing dries up just as trust is be­ing built. The ‘Hoop of Life’ project must be ex­am­ined ob­jec­tive­ly if sport is to be used as a tool to ad­dress at-risk youth and com­mu­ni­ties.

2. The Pay-to-Play Gap: If the most vul­ner­a­ble youth can­not af­ford the sport­ing equip­ment, bats, shoes, ten­nis rac­quets, cloth­ing, etc., they re­main at risk.

3. Da­ta, Not Just a Feel­ing or a Hunch: To jus­ti­fy the use of tax­pay­ers’ and cor­po­ra­tions’ monies, da­ta must be used to track how sport par­tic­i­pa­tion im­proves school at­ten­dance and re­duces "at-risk" be­hav­iour. To mea­sure per­for­mance ob­jec­tive­ly, Key Per­for­mance In­di­ca­tors (KPIs), tar­gets, and Mon­i­tor­ing and Eval­u­a­tion (M&E) tools must be es­tab­lished dur­ing the de­sign phase of sport for de­vel­op­ment projects. They must not be es­tab­lished af­ter im­ple­men­ta­tion when ‘suc­cess’ can be sub­jec­tive­ly ‘mea­sured’ by sim­ply mov­ing the goal posts!

In the end

A whis­tle can be as pow­er­ful as a gav­el. By in­vest­ing in the per­son be­hind the play­er, the sport­ing are­na be­comes a field of hope. If we can keep our youth on the court/field/pool, we stand a much bet­ter chance of keep­ing them out of the court­rooms.