Current Issues
No.40
January 2004
 
    

The Next Step: International Expert Meeting on Sport and Development
Amsterdam, NL, November 13-14, 2003
Dr. Colin Higgs,
ICSSPE Vice-President, Scientific Services

More than 140 delegates from 42 countries met for two days under the 55 meter high dome of a magnificently restored 16th Century Amsterdam Church to celebrate the recent huge strides made in using sport as an international development tool, and to plan greater cooperation and partnerships as more national and international development agencies realize the full potential of sport as a tool for social and youth development.
Hosted jointly by the Dutch Government’s Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and the Netherlands Organization for Development and Cooperation, the conference brought together international development agencies and sport groups from both the developed and developing countries in a series of working meetings.
In the opening plenary session speakers from the Dutch Government, and UNICEF highlighted the new role that sport was playing in international development. “Five years ago you could not have held a conference like this” said a Dutch government representative, “there just were not that many people around who understood the value of sport as a development tool.” She went on to say, “The Dutch Government has committed one million Euro in 2004 in the lead up to the Athens Paralympic Games. The money will be used to promote ‘Five-a-Side” a football (soccer) variation that sees five visually impaired athletes taking to the field. Funding will be used to help developing countries learn the sport, and bring teams to the Paralympics. The highlight of this activities will be just before the Paralympics when a team from one of the developing countries will take on an all-star team from world able-bodied soccer. And we expect the developing countries to win.”
Following the plenary session, working groups were established and they worked for two full days to prepare a final report to be taken back to the closing session. Different working groups considered 5 separate but interlinked topics:
  • Strengthening local community structures in and through sport
  • Local sports related structures from a national perspective
  • From “Train the Trainer” to “Sustain the trainer”
  • Sport and HIV/AIDS prevention
  • Sports and people with disabilities
Because of my background, I was assigned to the Sports and persons with disability group, and when we made our presentation at the end of the two days, there was consensus that we had captured the key elements of all the other groups – since the problems and solutions for using sport in international development for persons with a disability are essentially the same as for the other groups, but with the added difficulty of overcoming the problems of exclusion from education and employment of persons with disability that is still found in many developing countries.
Everyone at the conference was assigned to a working group, and stayed with that group for the majority of the workshop; the purpose being to try to get detailed and specific descriptions of best practices in each of the workshop areas. In our workshop, we heard about the success of Wheelchair Tennis’ programs in countries such as Sri Lanka, and of the innovative work being done in sport through the integration of individuals with physically and intellectual impairments in Bolivia.
Facilitated with skill and enthusiasm by Mike Zuijderduijn, our Dutch workshop leader, we progressed through a series of in-depth exercises to identify the conditions that would lead to success in using sport in international development to advance the lives of persons with disability. Our working group’s final presentation will be available on the ICSSPE web site, for those who are interested, and the Conference’s final report will be available on-line sometime in early 2004, and interested readers should check the English language website www.sportdevelopment.org/nextstep.
Our “expert working group” had participants from every continent except Antarctica, and between us we had representatives of donor and recipient countries, program planners and administrators, front-line program delivery practitioners, and representatives of International Development Agencies and the International Paralympic Committee at both the administrative and elite athlete levels. It was a wonderfully diverse group, who shared a passion for working with (and also included) persons with a disability, and who worked well together over a long series of sessions that lasted well into the night, and which slowed down only slightly during meals.

Our conclusions
Our group concluded that for international development to be successful in helping persons with a disability in developing countries, there needed to be well designed programs of intervention, and policy development, delivered in an environment that facilitated the full societal involvement of persons with disabilities, while being supported with appropriate physical and human resources.
  • Full involvement, we decided, required a full democratization process, with persons with a disability provided equal rights and opportunities and encouragement of full participation. It was our belief that this could only be achieved when there were adequate checks and balances in place, and the rights of people with disabilities were both entrenched in law, and in practice. The goal was to have people with disabilities accepted as full members of their communities.
  • We also had some suggestions for the design of interventions, both with respect to policies and planning. The single most important determinant of success was thought to be the careful undertaking of needs assessments specific to the area in which the international development project was being delivered. We had great debate about just how “local” the needs assessment had to be, and eventually came to the conclusion that this was likely a factor of the size and diversity of the country involved: with national needs assessments being best suited to small countries with homogeneous problems, and very local needs assessments being needed when the local conditions were sufficiently differentiated from the needs of other nearby communities. Regardless of the geographic scope of the needs assessment we considered three principles to be critical:
    • Fully participatory planning – with full involvement of those who would be the recipients any planned activities, and the sharing of the priority objectives from the needs assessment with the local population. Those doing the needs assessments were reminded that there is often a huge local “knowledge-base” on the cultural, political and historical backgrounds to the proposed project(s). We also considered it to be critical that plans for project sustainability be put in place right from the start.
    • A need for there to be ongoing education and awareness programs to make the needs and aspirations of persons with disabilities better known to local authorities and the non-disabled public
    • The need to gain support from all levels of local civil society.
  • If sport is to be used as a development tool we considered it essential that adequate physical and human resources be in place. Specific to sport we urged countries to ensure that ALL sport and recreation facilities that are developed were accessible and available for use by all. We also thought it was important for developing countries to determine how they would sustain their facilities once built, and to have a plan for the organizational operation of them.
  • In terms of human resources the working group recognized the need to create meaningful employment opportunities for those individuals in developing countries who work in the area of sport and physical education for persons with disability – with special emphasis on the involvement of persons with disabilities as empathetic and highly visible role models who would have credibility with people with disabilities.
The Next Steps International Expert Meeting: Sport and Development was an overwhelming success, both at the official, organizational, level where the meeting objectives were more than met, but perhaps even more so at the personal level. For many of those present it was a revelation to find that they were not working alone – that there were like-minded individuals around the world working for the same goals and with much the same methods. New alliances were formed, new projects initiated, and new joint ventures proposed, and participants returned to their countries with a renewed sense of purpose, and a commitment to make more and more national and international policy makers aware of the major positive impact that international development through sport could have on the youth of the world – in both the developed and developing nations.




http://www.icsspe.org/portal/bulletin-january2004.htm