Coaching Corps
This project's parent organization is Coaching Corps
It operates in United States
It uses Multiple sports
Entered the Sport for Health Award
More about Coaching Corps
Children living in low-income communities make their way toward adulthood burdened by a tangle of deficits, from pre-natal care to academic preparedness and job skills. Recent research puts an especially tight focus on social-emotional indicators. The indivisible root here is connectedness. Coaching Corps addresses children’s urgent need for connectedness with sports led by trained coaches.
Sports provide a rich, well-documented range of benefits that are fundamental to health and success: improved physical and social-emotional fitness, cognitive function and academic aspiration; lower rates of drug use, pregnancy, dropout and gang affiliation. Maximizing this potential requires connectedness, the focus of great coaching. But in the US, 63% of children from low-income families are shut out of sports because of cost. That means the children most in need of a great coach and the benefits of sports aren’t even in the line-up. Program partners and the coaches themselves are Coaching Corps’ secondary beneficiaries.
Afterschool organizations receive an influx of enthusiastic volunteers who are screened, trained and supported throughout the season. Coaches develop leadership skills and an understanding of issues affecting low-income families. Their experience of civic engagement gains depth and meaning through social media connections with a national movement of like-minded volunteers.