Can sport foster a common vision for international goals?

‘Where does sport make the difference? Where is the difference? How does that happen? And why does it happen? If we can answer those questions, we would have moved the agenda from an evangelical position, to a sport for development community’

Oliver Dudfield (previously Head of Sport for Development and Peace at the Commonwealth Secretariat) and Oscar Mwaanga (Programme Director of International Sport Management & Innovation at the University of London) discuss the big question: can sport foster a common vision for the international goals?

Their discussion covers the following questions:

• How can sport best contribute to this vision of the 2030 agenda? [00:05 – 03:05]
• The issue of a targeted approach and trade-offs: can substantial focus on specific issues cause some of the broader impacts of sport based policy and programming to be lost? [03:06 – 10:55]
• Scale: how can we address challenges of scaling impact? [10:56 – 17:44]
• Do we need to shift from specific programmatic intervention to looking at policy reforms and broader changes within the sport for development community? [17:45 – 26:59]
• Interconnectivity: global communities, accelerated digitisation, and the future of the field? [27:00 – 36:51]
• What would your two to three pieces of advice be to a policymaker or practitioner who wants to enhance and maximise the contribution that sport can make to the SDG agenda? [36:51 – 43:27]

“If a programme sits in a structure that has inequalities, we need the validation of that programme to have some statements that respond to that reality. My advice to policymakers is, as you design a programme, make sure there’s an extra layer of responsibility; to what extent does the design of this programme actually reflect inequalities?

Please ensure that there’s a statement in there that talks about what are your privileges as an individual creating it. What is the historical truth about how that programme responds, to what extent is it going to propagate that?” [38:56]

NB: Please note that the titles of contributors reflect their position at the time of contributing to the course. We recognise that various contributors have changed their roles and positions and others may do so in the future.