Recovery through Sport
Recovery through Sport
Our initiative to use sport for relief following times of disaster and crisis
While the scientific basis on the use of sport after natural disasters is not very clear, studies suggest sport could be key to building mental resilience in young people, with coaches playing a particularly crucial role in creating supportive environments for rehabilitation. Despite this, sport remains vastly underutilized in international humanitarian aid, often seen merely as a recreational activity. Most aid focuses on immediate needs like healthcare, food, shelter, and infrastructure, while the long-term mental health effects on children are often overlooked.
While funds always pour in during high attention periods immediately when disaster or crisis strikes, significant additional resources are often needed long after the news cycle ends, when affected communities are left on their own to cope, heal, and rebuild. This is the moment when both sport and our organization can make the biggest impact.
As a first step, we plan to establish a relief fund to provide rapid emergency funding to communities we have already made a commitment to (i.e., through existing partners and projects) during times when they are in crisis and need additional support. Additionally, we will develop and test the use of sport as a method to help children affected by disaster and crisis to overcome psychological traumata in the recovery phase following disasters of larger magnitude.
Throughout this process, we will use an evidence-based approach to confirm the effect sport can have on psycho-social rehabilitation in post-crisis areas and enable us to develop a proven concept that we can provide funding and in-kind support to organizations working in recovery zones.
Once we have a proven approach, we will open the fund more broadly to enable organizations to apply for financial and in-kind support to implement the approach in other locations.
As we work with selected partners to develop proof of concept for Recovery through Sport, we will be unable to accept additional proposals and support requests. Until then, we ask organizations to refrain from asking for funding out of the Recovery through Sport initiative.