NSA International Kenyan peace builders teach Dutch sports leaders how to create positive role models for youths in their neighbourhoods.

Dont shoot bullets, but balls!

Keeping youths at risk out of trouble, that is no simple matter, whether they live in deprived neighbourhoodsin Europe or in East African border regions. Seeds of Peace Africa (SOPA) has managed to use football to reduce ethnic tensions in a Kenyan border region. In the past 1.700 people were killed in cattle raids every year; today youths test their mettle on the pitch. Dutch community workers visited and acquired new ideas: sports coaches should not only know about sports, but also know how to analyze conflicts and how to build communities.

Security in deprived neighbourhood
Community sports coaches are often employed for their prowess in sports and didactic skills. In practice though, in countries like the Netherlands they take on responsibilities for social security in multi-cultural, deprived neighbourhoods. At the same time, municipal councils are often too little aware of the role sports can play in raising the quality of life.

Sports leaders learn how to reduce conflict
International Sports Alliance (formerly named NSA International) and the African SOPA together developed the Sports Leaders International programme during an E-Motive exchange. Dutch community sports coaches and sports teachers learned how their East African colleagues had developed a methodology forusing sports in reducing conflicts in communities and between different groups. Refined conflict analyses by means of community mapping play an important role, as do games to get to know each other and to build respect. Youths are offered alternatives to negativebehaviour: sports too are a way of impressing people. They build trust between each other and learn to start a dialogue. [Link: More about the method]

Coaching on the job
After a pilot in Utrecht in September 2012, a selection of Dutch community workers and sports teachers from Breda, Tilburg, Amsterdam and Den Bosch visited Kenya in October 2013. In March 2014 four Sports for Peace and Development professionals from Kenya paid a return visit to the Netherlands, and shared their experiences on location. SOPA had also developed a manual with relevant tools for them, including trust-building games. It contributed to the creation of a new Sports Development Youth in Amsterdam. In other cities SOPA has helped to create new curricula, international internships, and job coaching opportunities for community sports leaders. Tilburg and Breda have both strengthened their teambuilding processes as a result of the E-motive exchange.

Planned co-operation in the future
The methodology will be further developed in 2014, including during a visit to theNetherlands of peace builders. A first version of the Peace and Sports manual will be completed, as well as a description of the intervention strategy. Reports with analyses of the situation in Kenya will be written, as will a report with recommendations for the Peace and Sports manual.


Method

How to build a dialogue

The Peace & Sports Programme has kicked off a dialogue between differentgroups of youths at risk, by means of sports activities, tournaments and competitions. Security in the restless border region between Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan has improved a lot as a result. Central to the approach is a refined context analysis with the aid of community mapping; the mapping of issues a community is dealing with. Equally important are community sports coaches with the right skills for defusing conflicts.

It is important that youths are offered alternatives to negative behaviour, such as drugs use, crime or violence. In what other ways can youths test their mettle, impress each other? Community sports coaches bring youths togetherin discussions on questions like: What do you rather have? Money or good relations with friends and family? These questions are asked around activities already fitting in with local culture, such as football.

Alongside the direct approach to young men, girls and women are involved too. The programme also reaches out to other groups, such as the elderly and government representatives. Together they work from a Value Based Sports perspective, which goes beyond the Fair Play methodology often used in the Netherlands. FairPlay is focused on the sport. Value Based Sports is about co-operation, dialogue and engagement, on and off the pitch.

To raise the trust in community sports coaches, they are recruited from among the youths at risk, and coached on the job to become Peace & Sports Facilitators. That is one of the ways of delinking risks and individuals. They learn all kinds of games that can bring young people together to get to know and trust each other better. These games have funny names like Locomotive and Water Melon.