Sport for development: Working with youth or youth work? A commentary

Several writers have commented on the similarities between S4D and youth work. In addition to mostly working with young people, there is a growing recognition that the effectiveness of such programmes depends on the nature of the social climate and social relationships which form the context for specially designed sporting activity – what is often referred to as sport plus. Such an approach, with its emphasis on positive social relationships and participant-centred development, can be viewed as containing elements of youth work. However, although the relationship between S4D and youth work practice may overlap, the relationship tends to be rather ad hoc, with an absence of a systematic consideration of the nature of youth work practice, processes and mechanisms of change in such programmes. Although there are several, often competing, perspectives on youth work, in this commentary, we draw on a ‘universal model’ of youth work to outline the core elements of youth work practice and raise questions about their applicability to S4D programmes. Although there is clearly an overlap, some fundamental components of youth work may raise issues for certain approaches to S4D. For example, the concept of the ‘young people's mandate’ and the centrality of participants’ role in leading their own youth work and therefore preventing the determination of outcomes in advance, all may raise difficulties for more traditionally designed S4D. Further, research indicates that the adoption of a youth work approach goes beyond individual coaches and programmes and requires cultural changes within S4D organisations. The extent to which a youth work approach is formally adopted by S4D organisations, with associated coach training, will reflect their current evaluation of their effectiveness. As this is a commentary, we do not adopt a prescriptive stance towards S4D organisations and conclude that the relative standardised ‘universal model’ provides a framework for a systematic critical analysis of current practice, with a requirement for pragmatic adaptations of the ‘young people's mandate.’