Sports and donors team up
A dossier by Debra Percival and Hans Piennar
Depiction of Sierra Leonean football legend, Ajay Kallon, on wall of national football stadium, Freetown, 2008.
© Debra Percival
“Sport has the power to change the world, the power to inspire, the power to unite people in a way that little else can. It speaks to young people in a language they understand.”
These stirring words of former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, encapsulate sport’s ability to put development on track, starting with individual self-esteem. The FIFA World Cup football to take place in South Africa in 2010 – the first time on the African continent – is expected to bring social and economic benefits to the country beyond hosting the event.
With a few exceptions, donors have been slow to fund sports-related development initiatives, given other priorities and a simple lack of money available. Many interviewed for this focus on sport spoke of the difficulty of accessing funds given ever more stringent evaluation criteria with donors’ demands to apply the criteria of accountants to the evaluation of projects in the field of sport.
NGOs have traditionally led the way in funding sports initiatives, as well as some national lottery funds and European football federations. On a national level, non EU-states Norway, Canada and Australia and EU member state, the UK with its special initiative for the 2012 London Olympic Games ‘International Inspiration’ which we profile, are some of those trailblazing sport for development projects.
The national policies of some African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries such as Papua New Guinea and Jamaica, already reflect the reach of sport beyond producing elite athletes and the African Union (AU) is also poised to take on the responsibility for sports development in the continent within its social policy objectives, with some nations hoping this may trigger the release of more donor funds for sports programmes.
