Reflecting on how to create a “fun” atmosphere for girls and young women, a participant in an evaluation of the Keeping Girls in Sport online training commented, “Coaches take this as ‘we have to play games all the time and never push the girls outside of their comfort zone.’ Once girls love a sport, being challenged and competing IS fun to them.” Learn more about the insights from the evaluation project between JumpStart Charities and the University of Alberta.
Use double quotes to find documents that include the exact phrase: "aerodynamic AND testing"
Use double quotes to find documents that include the exact phrase: "aerodynamic AND testing"
“… as a mom, it’s really easy to tell your kids what you expect. But to show them what you expect is harder. And so I think the benefit of Swim Together is feeling good about what I’m modeling for my kids.”
– mom participant in the Swim Together program
Parents and guardians are frequently left on the “sidelines” watching their children participate in sport. By prioritizing their child’s involvement, adults often don’t participate in sport and physical activity themselves, and their own well-being may suffer (Misener, 2020). In particular, mothers may view recreational sport for themselves as either a guilt-laden activity or a luxury due to both cost and time (Jones et al., 2010).
Research suggests that while mothers recognize the benefits of physical activity, they often put the needs of their children, household or employer above their own needs (Hamilton & White, 2010). With adult obesity and daily working hours on the rise (Statistics Canada, 2016), coupled with greater social isolation and many pandemic challenges, this lack of participation in sport and recreation among parents may persist. That could have detrimental psychological and health consequences, particularly for women.
When it comes recreational sport, girls also face many barriers to participation, including stigma associated with body image, negative peer influence, and lack of social support and positive role models (Canadian Women & Sport, 2020). Research also tells us that parental involvement plays a critical role in motivating children to remain active in sport. In particular, girls who were engaged in more sports and practised more often per week were those who had a mother practising organized physical activity regularly (Rodrigues et al., 2018).
This blog shares early findings from a mother-daughter swim program. It also encourages sport leaders to think about sport programs differently and re-shape how to offer sport to female youth and their parents. A SIRC Researcher/Practitioner Match Grant and a Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA) Gender Equity in Recreational Sport – Community Grant provided funding support for this research partnership and program.
The Swim Together program
In fall 2020, a swim club piloted an 8-week, co-participation swim program at the Woolwich Memorial Centre in Elmira, Ontario. The program design stemmed from talking and consulting with stakeholders, including coaches, researchers in community sport, swim club administrators, a municipal facility manager, women, and girls (ages 8 to 13).
Titled Swim Together, the program brought mothers and daughters to the pool at a shared time for 45 minutes of weekly coaching (individual, small group and large-group). In all, 14 moms and 18 girls participated in sessions on swimming technique, cardiovascular fitness, and having fun in the water. Some sessions focused on particular peer groups (moms or girls) and others were mother-daughter activities.
Impact for women and girls
Other than alleviating constraints that women and girls face, Swim Together aimed to contribute to positive outcomes like improving physical and mental health, increasing self-confidence and mastery, opening doors for parent-child role modeling, increasing social connectedness, and giving sport clubs a model to implement organized, intentional opportunities for family health and well-being, particularly for women and girls. The pilot program’s early impact included:
Physical activity and fitness
Swim Together showed that women and girls both experienced significant positive change in their physical activity level and perceived fitness. Participants appreciated that the program was designed to be fun and non-competitive. The organized nature held mothers accountable to attend and helped motivate them to be physically active.
“When (the kids) swim at other times, I don’t really do a whole lot of physical activity. So this was nice to be able to actually do it with them and get that physical activity instead of just hopping in the car and dropping them off and then going back half an hour later and picking them up.”
– mom participant
Self-confidence and mastery
Moms like being coached! Coaching was central to helping women and girls develop their skills and see improvement in their own abilities. The program’s consistent, weekly training translated into greater confidence for participants. As their skill level developed, they were more likely to come swim lengths on their own at other times of the week.
Social interaction
Despite COVID-19 restrictions posing some barriers, Swim Together still created a sense of community among women who didn’t necessarily see themselves as “active” or “athletic.” Now, they ‘re swimming regularly with new friends who enjoy a similar recreational pursuit.
“Especially because of COVID, I am struggling to find a social circle. Swim Together has given me a social circle on a regular basis… being able to actually be in a group in a safe space again, it’s something that I’ve definitely been missing.”
– mom participant
Positive role modeling and shared interest within families
Positive role modeling was particularly important for women who felt like they weren’t necessarily modeling the values that they were trying to instill in their children. For example, values like being lifelong physically active individuals and trying new forms of physical activity. Women appreciated the structured opportunity to demonstrate these values and behaviours to their children while cultivating a shared interest.
“I value health. And yet, I’m not living a life where it looks like I value my health. And so for me, I think the benefit is twofold…. as a mom, it’s really easy to tell your kids what you expect. But to show them what you expect is harder… I think the benefit of Swim Together is feeling good about what I’m modeling for my kids.”
– mom participant
3 strategies for sport clubs to build a co-participation program
1. Use your club’s capacity strengths to experiment with co-participation
The swim club had strong coaches with shared values (that is, promoting positive outcomes for women and girls, and supporting positive family dynamics). Coaches and swim club administrators worked together to embrace new ways to use the pool facility for a program that wasn’t exclusive to youth. By successfully applying for grants to cover part of the participant fees, they were able to offer a low-cost program. If future grants are unavailable, it will be vital to communicate during the registration process that coaching has value, even though it adds to registration costs.
2. Embrace evaluation through research partnerships
To facilitate co-participation programming, all stakeholders must have a voice in the program’s planning, implementation and evaluation. We used a community-based partnership model that involved sport practitioners, university-based researchers, and participants. By conducting focus groups and interviews throughout the program, we learned about people’s experiences and adapted the program on an ongoing basis. Particularly for new sport programs, conducting evaluative research alongside the program provides stakeholders with new insight into specific mechanisms that can help enhance participation.
3. Use co-participation to develop pathways for lifelong participation
Swim Together linked many aspects that lay the foundation for lifelong physical activity and sport participation. Because their mom was present, younger girls found this program made them more comfortable participating. Some girls even expressed interest in joining the regular swim team. Whereas others, who were former members of a swim team, preferred the non-competitive physical activity in the Swim Together program. Some moms said they wouldn’t have been comfortable going solo to swim lanes, but with their daughter involved, they felt more willing to participate. While women and girls face barriers to being active at different points in life, this program offers participants an activity to help mitigate those barriers.
“[Swim Together] brought in more interest in swimming – both competitive swimming and swimming as a health activity. I also love that the program is bringing more girls into our centre. It’s getting parents involved and promoting mother-daughter bonding. I think it’s bringing a whole social aspect as well, so that the moms are working together and getting to know people, especially during this time with COVID.”
– Municipal Director of Recreation
Moving forward
Our program shows that having a child participate in sport doesn’t necessarily mean parents miss out on participating in sports themselves. However, sport leaders must think differently about how to organize sport and intentionally create opportunities for family health and well-being.
Swim Together offers a new co-participation model to engage women and girls simultaneously in a sport pursuit. This model has potential to help sport clubs re-imagine programs that promote the health and well-being of women and girls by allowing them to participate together in organized sport.
As SIRC’s recent #MomsGotGame campaign noted, our sport system needs to provide new resources and supports to overcome the unique challenges and circumstances for moms’ sport participation (Allan, 2020), particularly due to the positive influence active mothers have on encouraging their children’s sport participation (Rodrigues et al., 2018).
For more information about this research, please contact Katie Misener at k.misener@uwaterloo.ca.
Female youth involved with community parasport programs identify four benefits of their participation – social development, physical development, self-perceptions (feeling more confident), and athlete development (a desire to continue with parasport). Learn more in the SIRC blog.
Research about the community sport experiences of second-generation African Canadian girls identifies several challenges to participation. Tips to support participation include all-female spaces, providing concurrent programming for younger siblings, and engaging multicultural health navigators to build trusting relationships with families.
If there was ever a time in our history to consider how to not leave anyone behind, 2020 was that year. As people and organizations seek to reconcile the impact of COVID-19, we need to think about how we build back in ways that intentionally bring people together and collectively work towards a better future. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can provide a framework to achieve this goal.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals?
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, is a global call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere. At the Agenda’s core are 17 SDGs and 169 associated targets designed as a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.” The SDGs are a universal call for social responsibility – by the 193 countries who have signed on, and across every sector and to each person. We each have a role to play to meet the SDGs and contribute to a better way forward – a way that leaves no one behind.
Why does this matter to sport?
Sport is well documented in contributing to social development through developing life-skills, social skills and connections, and mental and physical health and wellbeing (Bailey et al. 2009; Holt et al. 2008; Neely & Holt 2014). Many sport organizations are investing in values-based sport, safe sport, and diversity and inclusion. The SDGs are an opportunity to align these priorities with the SDGs’ broader framework focused on inclusion and our social responsibility to contribute to the greater good and work toward a better future.
Of the 17 SDGs, eight are directly relevant to sport:
3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
4 – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
5 – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
8 – Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
10 – Reduce inequality within and among countries
11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
16 – Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
17 – Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
The Kazan Action Plan provides a framework for aligning action within sport, physical activity, and physical education to contribute to the SDGs. For Canadian sport organizations, the Kazan Action Plan supports global connections and alignment on areas of common interest such as advocacy for sport, integrity of sport, gender equity, information sharing, and collective measurements – all key issues for the Canadian sport system.
According to Vicki Walker, Director General of Sport Canada, “The Sustainable Development Goals provide us with an internationally recognized and accepted framework through which we can identify and communicate the added value and broader impacts of [the Canadian government’s] investments in sport. The SDGs, and the global movement to use them to measure the impacts of sport, can help governments and sport organizations better understand the impacts of their current work, as well as guiding future investments and initiatives.”
The SDGs are increasingly used as a lens through which funders (governments, foundations, and others) are assessing the impact of their investments, requiring sport organizations to integrate the SDGs into their project designs and evaluation strategies.
Engagement with the SDGs
Sport organizations can engage with the SDGs by:
- Considering how the SDGs connect to current and future priorities, using them to inform activities to contribute to greater inclusion and other social outcomes.
- Articulating specific goals, targets and measurement strategies relating to the SDGs to create awareness and accountability for advancing the goals within your organization, community, and sport ecosystem.
- Communicating about work relating to the SDGs so key stakeholders, including members and funders, know you are investing in social development and a purpose beyond simply delivering a sport program.
- Working with others to move forward together – SDG 17 is about global partnerships supporting the goals, and is a call to action for us to collaborate to maximize the outcomes and impact.
Canadian sport organizations using the SDGs
Several Canadian sport organizations are already using the SDGs, including Commonwealth Sport Canada and MLSE LaunchPad.
Commonwealth Sport Canada (CSC) is a powerful example of a Canadian sport organization contributing internationally to the SDGs. Through the use of Sport For Development and Sport Development programming to promote community and social development and build national sport system capacity throughout the Commonwealth, CSC contributes to 10 SDGs (1- 5, 8, 10, 11, 16 and 17) with a focus on SDG 3,4,5 and 16. CSC has created or enhanced 129 Sport Development and Sport for Development (S4D) projects, including 17 S4D projects exclusively for women and girls. Of those 17 projects, nine are operational today in countries designated as official development assistance countries, where aid promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries.
Within Canada, MLSE Launchpad created the Sport For Development Metrics Framework to unify the measurement and evaluation efforts of a range of organizations that fund and deliver youth Sport For Development programming across Canada and beyond. The use of consistent metrics enables powerful shared learnings to improve youth outcomes and charitable returns on investment. The Framework focuses on four pillars – Healthy Body, Healthy Mind, Ready for School, and Ready for Work; and aligns with SDGs 3, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 16. The Framework is based on MLSE LaunchPad’s evidence-based Theory of Change, which describes how Sport For Development programming contributes to a range of Positive Youth Development Outcomes for youth facing barriers.
Getting Started
As organizations look to recover from COVID-19 and evolve in response to the social reckoning resulting from the anti-racism movement, we have an opportunity to consider how to create a better world, a stronger sport system, and a path towards equity and justice as we move forward. The SDGs are an opportunity to connect to a global initiative AND consider how social inclusion, poverty, the environment, education and other key areas are connected and influence the lives of current and future sport participants. The SDGs are a rallying point that sport can embrace, align around, and use to truly make a global impact. Imagine if we took our collective energies and our passion for competition and channeled those into racing towards 2030 and meeting the SDGs!
New research discovered female athletes seek specialty medical treatment later than male athletes for sport-related concussions, which may contribute to worse symptoms and longer recoveries. These findings reinforce the importance of early identification and the implementation of concussion management plans and protocols.
Looking to increase the reach of your training program? Encourage stakeholders to make it mandatory. An evaluation of the Keeping Girls in Sport online module demonstrated high completion rates in provinces where the training was mandated by some provincial sport organizations.
Coaches matter! Research with female youth parasport program participation revealed coaches can be sources of encouragement and motivation; or negatively affect athletes’ participation if they’re not experienced in parasport skills. The findings reinforce the importance of coach education for quality parasport experiences.
The upcoming Tokyo Paralympics will be an opportunity to inspire the next generation of Canadian Paralympians. However, without strong development pathways, young Canadians may not have the opportunity to pursue their dreams. An important first step along any development pathway is a positive introduction to sport through grassroots community programs. There is a persisting gap in the literature related to athletes’ experiences of existing community parasport programs, particularly among youth participants. As part of my Master’s research project, I spoke with female youth participants in a community multi-sport parasport program in Ontario to hear about their experiences. The athletes shared the ways they felt their participation had impacted their personal development, as well as their views of the program and how it fit into their lives.
Personal development
Athletes discussed four benefits to their personal development from their participation in the program:
- Social development – Athletes felt that the program gave them more opportunities to socialize with new peers and supportive adults, which led to a bigger social circle and increased their level of comfort when socializing with new people.
- Physical development – Athletes felt they developed sport specific skills and improved their general strength and fitness.
- Self-perceptions – Athletes discussed feeling more confident in their abilities. One participant’s mother described how her daughter became less self-conscious about her impairment through her participation in the parasport program.
“Before she went to the parasport program she wasn’t playing any sports at school. She was [self-conscious about it], and after being in the parasport program she did great and enjoyed it and it wasn’t any issue. After that she was happy to try things [at school].”
- Athlete development – After taking part in the program, athletes had a desire to continue with parasport, and goals for future sport and physical activity participation.
My sport future is playing hockey [or] wheelchair basketball. And I’m gonna be a professional.
The Program
Athletes also reflected on the aspects of the program that either enhanced or lessened their parasport experience. These reflections align with some of the “9 Ps of a Para-Ready Program” identified in the Becoming Para Ready resource (for more information see the SIRC blog about becoming para ready).
- Para-specificity – The para-specific design of the program created an opportunity for inclusion, regardless of sport experience or skill level. This design supported athletes’ need for belonging in ways they had not experienced before. However, some athletes felt unchallenged by the activities. These findings highlight that while the congregated setting can be beneficial, it may be important to group participants based on sport experience and skill. Both belongingness and challenge are included as key elements of quality parasport participation within Evans et al.’s (2018) framework.
When I’m in the parasport environment I feel really, really good. It’s nice because you’re there with people who, uh, with challenges just like you
- New Engagement – Athletes discussed how this multi-sport parasport program was different from the other sport opportunities that were available. The program introduced them to new sports and activities, made them comfortable by adopting a less intense attitude about competition than other activities they have done, and allowed them to achieve greater levels of success than they had experienced before. These sentiments highlight the value of congregated programming, and should be used in communication and promotional strategies to attract new participants.
- Coaches Matter – Coaches are an important source of encouragement and motivation, but also knowledge. Athletes described positive and supportive relationships with their coaches. However, they indicated not all coaches were well versed in parasport skills, negatively impacting their ability to effectively coach the athletes. Finding people to coach community programs is not always easy, especially for voluntary positions. The athletes’ comments reinforce the importance of coach education on parasport skills and strategy. The Coaching Association of Canada’s Coaching Athletes with a Disability e-learning module includes information about designing positive, safe and inclusive sport experiences for persons with a disability.
You don’t want the coach to be confused about what they’re doing.
- Blocked Pathway – Though the program inspired these female youth to continue with sport, opportunities were limited. Critical gaps exist in the development pathways from introductory parasport programs to lifelong participation or elite competition. A lack of programming limits valuable opportunities for social interaction, realization of health benefits, and outcomes associated with skill development, mastery, and the pursuit of goals.
Summary
The experiences of these athletes highlight the importance of community programming for supporting positive youth development and fostering a love of sport. It is important that programs are well-prepared to support athletes, with trained coaches and meaningful, appropriate activities. The athletes in community parasport programs want to learn and master skills, and deserve the opportunity to work towards their goals. It is our hope that with the high-quality resources developed in recent years, organizations will continue to develop their capacity to support all athletes, and the availability and accessibility of sport will cease to be prominent barriers among persons with disabilities.
The Valley Female Leadership Network in Nova Scotia created an infographic to help make case for investment in girls and women’s participation and leadership in sport and physical activity. Reflecting on their experience, they advise: “You may find you have too much information but that’s okay, you can always create more than one infographic!” Learn more.