COACHES ACROSS CONTINENTS TRAIN COMMUNITY LEADERS WITH GOALS HAITI

This January, Coaches Across Continents travelled out to the community of Leogane to run leadership coaching programs with previous Beyond Sport Award Winners, G.O.A.L.S. Haiti.

In 2018, the NGO from Haiti has made a new commitment to staff development, which it plans to implement by incorporating new leadership training for its staff and coaches. G.O.A.L.S. have partnered with Coaches Across Continents for the past 6 years and have used their curriculum to expand and improve a number of their programs.

G.O.A.L.S. Haiti won the Sport for Education Award in 2016 at the Beyond Sport Global Awards for their project ‘Levelling the Playing Field’, which uses soccer to teach literacy and numeracy to impoverished children and adults in rural Haiti, who would not normally have access to an education.

Since winning the award, the program’s numbers have doubled, supplemented by increased collaboration and support from Beyond Sport partners such as streetfootballworld, Football for Hope, and Coaches Across Continent.

“Winning the Award has been transformative for GOALS Haiti. As a small grassroots non-profit working to advance youth leadership through soccer and education, the award afforded us the support to expand our programs and gain visibility. Together we are creating stronger, healthier communities in rural Haiti." said Kathy McAllister, Executive Director at G.O.A.L.S.

The focus of this year's training in Leogane was the third and final phase of the 'Ask For Choice' curriculum, which focuses specifically on equity, gender equality and sex education.

The program activities included interactive learning sessions and discussions around the games and social issues they sought to address. The groups worked together to establish what could be improved in terms of getting the right social messages across through the teachers and coaches.

The leaders then took what they had learned from the sessions and worked with their teams in sporting activities to implement the new skills and lessons. One of the founding coaches, Nadege, said she had seen a huge difference since the inception of this curriculum. Communities now embrace girls taking part in sports and it has opened up other possibilities for their inclusion.