Shortlist Spotlight: Sport for Health and Well-being Award
Each week, in the run up to the Beyond Sport Global Awards in New York on July 27th, we’ll be showcasing every one of our incredible shortlisters. From sailing in Vietnam to soccer in San Diego, we have some incredible, innovative and inspiring nominees on this year’s Official Shortlist.
This week we look at the Sport for Health and Well-being category, where three organizations are using sport to engage with their communities and improve health, and awareness of health issues.
This category is aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 3, meaning all programs that are shortlisted are designed to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. This could mean using sport to raise awareness of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tackling mental health issues or simply creating a more active lifestyle for participants.
Sport for Health and Well-being Official Shortlist
Let Her Choose - Tackle Africa, Tanzania
TackleAfrica uses the power and popularity of football to deliver sexual health education to young people on football pitches across the continent. It provides a platform for regular health education with a respected and informed coach, and creates a safe space for young people to discuss sensitive issues. TackleAfrica is working with Plan Tanzania in Tarime district of the Mara region where child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) are two of the most oppressive ways in which women and girls are disadvantaged. The program also focuses on the wider issues of reproductive health with boys and girls so that commonly held myths and taboos can be challenged. TackleAfrica has developed a unique curriculum focussing on child marriage and FGM, and through a series of football based drills and games coaches communicate key messages about both of these challenging problems. Local coaches are trained in how to use the course, and both male and female coaches lead the sessions with boys and girls from local football clubs participating on a weekly basis.
Imagine Your Goals - Everton in the Community, UK
Everton in the Community, the official charity of Everton Football Club, use the power of sport to motivate, educate and inspire people in the local communities to improve life opportunities. Imagine Your Goals delivers 'football therapy' sessions covering a broad geographical footprint of Merseyside and has done since 2007. These football therapy sessions consist of fun, progressive, and inclusive football training sessions coupled with mental wellbeing related education and personal development workshops. IYG also facilitates an extensive mentoring programme, which provides the participants a platform to dream ‘big’, define their life goals, put plans in place to achieve them, shadow professionals and receive friendly accountability, and undergo a tailored employability/confidence building training course.
i-tri: Transformation through Triathlon – i-tri Girls
i-tri uses the sport of triathlon and the power of teambuilding, mentorship and relationship building to help middle school age girls develop lifelong habits and behaviors that promote healthy mental and physical wellbeing. Research shows that 75% of girls with low self-esteem reported engaging in harmful activities such as disordered eating, cutting school, bullying, smoking, sexual experimentation, and drinking alcohol. The East End of Long Island, where i-tri is based, was named a cluster-zone for suicides and is seeing a sky-rocketing rate of opioid addiction. For the participants, many of whom have never ridden a bike and don’t know how to swim, completing a triathlon is seemingly impossible. With this success, the i-tri girls gain a sense of capability and strength.