An Approach to Organized Sport

What I have experienced these last few weeks has been unlike anything else. It had never crossed my mind to possibly run my own soccer development program until now. 

So what have I learned that changed my mind? The answer lies within my experience with Lionsraw and through what we learned in class. Organized sport allows the kids to work with others and have fun while gaining physical activity and staying away from other negative influences at least while they are at the camp. In class we learned to approach soccer development programs by always being skeptical to their claims or goals if they are not quantifiable, specific or measurable.  We also looked research on younger children from ages 6-12 that showed how soccer development programs were useful at bringing about teamwork skills, showed few positive effects on leadership and had no effect on self-confidence. Although, the advantages of sport-development programs have not been fully determined yet (Okada, Young).  In ``Sport and social development: Promise and caution from an incipient Cambodian Football league´´ Chiaki Okada and Kevin Young examine the role of SHFL (a sport for development program/Cambodian football league) on the lives of its participants. Their findings showed that the most undeniable output of the program was how it forged multiple relationships. The program additionally portrayed and I quote ``how otherwise relatively unempowered individuals can operate spontaneously, voluntarily and relatively autonomously at the grassroots level through sport to improve their social circumstances´´(Okada, Young).

Seeing it first hand in a Pinhais favela really sealed the deal. We were capable of talking to the volunteers who mostly came from Europe but some from all over the world. We got to understand the discipline these kids were being taught and the relationships they were making amongst themselves but also with the volunteers especially the ex-professional Brazilian coach who was the boss. You could see that the kids respected him and really respected his authority as the father figure. 

Like the findings of the Okada, Young study, Lionsraw did shed light on the childrens´ ability to operate spontaneously, voluntarily and relatively autonomously. Nevertheless, where I thought they could have improved on was getting to know the children coming in. One of the Lionsraw volunteers told me that they simply didn’t know what the kids schooling schedules where like. Therefore often times they didn’t know if kids where skipping school to come play soccer or actually playing during their break. So my suggestion to this would be to formalize the system a little more. This way they could understand their schedules at school and work around them. This could be easily done by getting their parents to come when they sign up to write down their children´s school schedules.

As a final thought, I had an idea of running a sport for development program but then I ran across Favela do Moinho and other groups like them on Facebook. Many individuals in favelas and urban occupations across Brazil were involved in organizations like this one which consisted of friends coming together, making teams and making alternative World Cups. The goal of these groups where to get people of all ages active and involved in organized sport for the fun of it! That’s when I got the idea of running fundraisers for organizations like these by entering their facilities and asking them what they need to run their alternative World Cups more efficiently. This way we can give them the necessary resources that they want to properly structure these tournaments and help give their alternative World Cups more structure. This is a perfect example of how people all over the world want to get involved in organized sport even when they have very little resources. I think that supporting organized sport is a wonderful thing and that giving locals the proper materials for them to run their own organized sport activities is a great way to support sport globally. This method avoids the one of the main criticisms of sport for development programs which is foreigners coming in and imposing their own practices amongst the locals.

Sources

http://irs.sagepub.com.libproxy.mta.ca/content/47/1/5.full.pdf+html

https://www.facebook.com/moinhoresiste/info