Keys to Using Soccer as a Social Inclusion Tool
When we see 8-year-old Thiago—who lives with his mother and grandmother in Rio de Janeiro’s Rocinha Favela—getting his bag ready for his afternoon soccer practice, instead of spending his free time running through the favela with his friends, there is no doubt that Thiago and his friends could greatly benefit from an extracurricular soccer training program as a viable alternative to spending their free time with more productive, healthier activities.
Stories like Thiago’s are common in countless vulnerable locations in developing countries, and being soccer a universal sport with plenty of benefits, there are powerful reasons for investing millions of dollars year after year in programs that use soccer as a tool for social inclusion. These stories seem to clear up any doubts about the potential of these initiatives to change the lives of under-privileged children.
The truth is that the effectiveness of these programs is inconclusive due to limited evidence available. Two studies by CAF—development bank of Latin America—shed some light on the issue, noting that scoring goals is not enough for kids like Thiago to benefit from these initiatives. These programs seem to have the potential to bring about significant changes in vulnerable populations, as long as special attention is paid to aspects such as curriculum structure, permanence of beneficiaries and the specific features of the target population. Otherwise, if the competitive aspect is emphasized, these initiatives could even cause negative effects on behavioral aspects, such as aggression.
These first experimental studies aimed to quantify the impacts caused by two soccer programs for development, with some differences in their curriculum structure and the context and conditions in which they were implemented. Since several recommendations focus on strengthening certain aspects of implementation, we decided to move towards more qualitative studies to understand the factors that could enhance these initiatives from the perspective of their main actors: beneficiaries, teachers, coaches and funders, among others.
With this in mind, we worked on a qualitative evaluation of a sport program for development in Rio de Janeiro and Niterói, funded by CAF and the Real Madrid Foundation, and implemented by Salesian schools in both locations. The first major difference of this program with the previous instances is that it not only uses soccer as a social inclusion tool, but uses a wider variety of extracurricular activities such as crafts, dance, reading and computer science, among others. These additional components could very well improve inclusiveness of this program and minimize some of the unwanted effects caused by the competitive aspect of soccer practice.
The results of this qualitative study confirm this hypothesis and, in addition, suggest that improving girls’ involvement could combat the stigma that women do not play soccer, as well as reduce the perception of violence around the sport. Another valuable recommendation is the continuous training of coaches, to help them incorporate pedagogical tools and thus change the traditional image of soccer training.
Lastly, family is still a key factor in ensuring success of these programs. Identifying socioeconomic conditions of households, calibrating expectations between a traditional soccer academy and a self-supporting program that teaches life skills and identifies opportunities to engage parents are just a few of the aspects that could positively impact the effectiveness of these initiatives.
Ultimately, improving the living conditions of children like Thiago transcends the mere idea of replacing leisure time with productive tasks through sports training. The use of soccer programs for development for these purposes poses tremendous planning and development challenges, where proper implementation is key to realizing the full potential of these initiatives, making them a good public policy option to tackle some of the scourges in the most vulnerable populations.
