|  | Feature: “Recreation Sport and Social Change in Sustainable Community Development” | No.55 January 2009 |
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Sport and Social Change in Post-Disaster Settings Reflections of a Student Attendee of the ICSSPE Workshop on Sport in Post-Disaster Settings, Rheinsberg, Germany Lesego Sehume |
Ask people what sport is and most might say it is grown men being paid obscene amounts of money to run around like kids. Ask people what the purpose of sport is and you will get an array of answers. One might be that sport is for the improvement of one’s physical well-being. Another may be to build character (a popularly held notion on sport although some believe sport reveals character rather than builds it). Yet another may be sport is for entertainment, a sort of opiate for the masses. One might also hear that sport is there so that one can meet new people thereby making new friends. It is the third answer that I will be discussing, that is, the social aspect of sport, although in a slightly different aspect. Few people see sport as a tool for social change or education. Sport is often thought of as the countless number of professional athletes that have been involved in illegal activities such as, but not limited to, drug use, spousal abuse and sexual assault. They also might think of athlete’s involved in “immoral” behaviour such as having multiple sexual partners and the violent behaviour on-field that is often glorified by the media thereby making it seem acceptable in any circumstance. An example of violence in sport being glorified is the 1995 English Premiership Football match when a player launched a two-footed, chest-high kung-fu kick at a hooligan fan - a moment that has been immortalised on TV and is still spoken about today. A definition of sport that might clarify the use of sport for social change is that of the United Nations Inter-agency Taskforce on Sport for Development and Peace: “All forms of physical activity that contribute to physical fitness, mental well-being and social interaction. These include: play; recreation; organized, casual or competitive sport; and indigenous sports or games.” It is in this context that sport will be discussed in this article. With this definition, “sport” can be used in various contexts. Professional sports teams/individuals are often involved in outreach activities, visiting crèches and orphanages to interact with children and playing whatever game they are professionals in. Just recently, Serena Williams visited South Africa and played tennis with children from a Johannesburg township. The concept of using sport in such a manner is not a new one. Wherever missionaries went in the early 20th century, even before that, they would use sport as a way to connect with the locals. They would also use it as a means of education. For example, they would play a game of soccer and then have bible study immediately after. They would try to relate lessons learned in the game to lessons learned in the bible. That is the use of sport for social change and it is a powerful tool is this respect. The examples that most South Africans use to highlight sport for social change are the 1995 Rugby World Cup and the 1996 African Cup of Nations (soccer). When the South African Rugby Team (Springboks) won the Rugby World Cup in 1995, it was said to have unified the nation, during that time it did. Rugby was seen as a white sport but when the Springbok captain received the trophy, the President at the time, Nelson Mandela, was standing right beside him. Race was not a factor in that heady moment. The only thing that mattered was that South Africa had just won the World Cup for the first time ever. In 1996, when the South African national soccer team (Bafana Bafana), won the AFCON Cup, soccer was perceived as a mostly black sport but at that time Bafana Bafana had a white captain in Neil Tovey. Once again, the State President was there beside him and race was not a factor. The team had done the nation proud. The above two examples are of sport as a tool for social change, but in both instances, the social change was a bit of an after-thought. The Rugby World Cup or AFCON weren’t specifically won for the purpose of nation building, but it was an added bonus. An example where social change wasn’t an after-thought is in the case of the tsunami that hit South East Asia in 2004. Sri Lanka was one of the countries severely affected by the tsunami. Sri Lanka is a country famous, amongst the cricket playing public, for its cricket. As a means of raising funds for the humanitarian effort, a cricket game was organised. It was the Sri Lankan national team against a World XI. All the proceeds of the game went to a tsunami survivor’s relief fund. This is an example of using a sport that is well-known and liked by the indigenous population as a means of not only getting funds but raising awareness. However, there are programs and organisations all around the world that use sport as part of their activities in an effort to enact social change and/or community upliftment. The International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE) is actively advocating the use of sport as tool for social change and recently hosted a seminar on Sport in Post-Disaster Intervention. The scope of the seminar was to see what place sport has in post-disaster intervention strategies. Many other organisations whose focus is along similar lines were in attendance, including: Right to Play, The Kids League, War Child, Swiss Academy for Development, Mercy Corps and Sport Sans Frontières. These groups cited experiences and programs they had implemented where sport was a major part of their intervention strategy. A program cited by the Swiss Academy for Development was a project in Bam, Iran. Bam is an area that had not experienced an earthquake in over 2000 years but in 2003, one struck with devastating consequences. The Swiss Academy for Development implemented a program in Bam to assist in the humanitarian effort in a sport context. Sport was used to occupy the children, to gauge the feelings of the survivors towards the program and their response to the earthquake. However, as with many post-disaster areas, there were hindrances, one obvious hindrance being the destruction of infrastructure (houses, community halls, businesses) due to the earthquake. One of the aims was try to keep children occupied while the adults tried to regain normality. In doing so, another problem was encountered as the majority of the residents of Bam are Muslim. This set certain restrictions such as boys and girls not being allowed to play together and boys not seeing girls while the girls are doing sport. Another difficulty encountered was in trying to gauge the parent’s response to the program. Many parents weren’t comfortable filling in questionnaires and preferred to tell stories as is per their usual way communicating. These cultural and religious aspects had to be respected by the people administering the program, thus the program had to be slightly augmented to accommodate these aspects. When it comes to setting up a sport program for social change, certain key factors have to be considered. The most important factor is to always put the program in a local context. What does this mean? As an organisation, or even an individual, one needs to be aware and considerate of the cultural, religious and societal norms in the particular targeted area. Not respecting norms as seemingly insignificant as not looking an elder in the eyes when they are speaking to you can cause mistrust between you and the people, at which point you will it find very difficult to successfully implement the intervention program. One needs to engage those you are trying to help when setting up the program so that it is applicable to the people’s situation and needs and so that the people have a sense of ownership of the activity. A sense of ownership and involvement also assists in capacity building. Building local capacity is a key pre-requisite for sustained success. Relief organisations or individuals can’t be in an area in perpetuity, unless workers live or intend on living there. Any disaster intervention program, for it to be truly effective, must go on for months, even years for the intended social change to truly take hold. If the residents of the targeted area can deliver, and just as importantly, grow the program on their own, then the prolonged presence of outside organisations won’t be necessary and the program would become self-sustaining. Communication with the community about intended outcomes of the intervention program and the limitations of your program is crucial. By communicating the limitations as well as possibilities of the program, false hope and unrealistic expectations are not created in the communities that are supposed to benefit from the interventions. Social change through sport is not there to magically transform lives because there is only so much an organisation or individual can do. In having a clear goal in mind, and in everyone knowing what that goal is and how it is to be achieved, the likelihood of the program being successful is much higher. Sport has the capacity to do so much good in the world and some of that capacity is being used by dedicated organisations and individuals all around the world. Countless “sport for social change” programs are being implemented across the globe. Some are highly successful, others have marginal success and some have no effect at all or even leave things slightly worse off then they found them. The latter programs are few but even in the failure of some programs, there is much to be learned. Sport, by any definition, can’t change all of the social ills of our world but it can make a significant contribution. Contact Lesego Sehume Department of Biokinetics, Sport and Leisure Sciences University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa Email: s24411028@tuks.co.za http://www.icsspe.org/portal/index.php?w=1&z=5 Sport and Social Change in Post-Disaster Settings Lesego Sehume