C230 Consulting Group’s Post

Yesterday marked the closure of our #ChangetheGame Global Sports Conference, organized under the leadership of DG Audrey Azoulay, but investment and programmes to capitalize on the #socialimpact of sports are just beginning! Ahead of #Paris24, UNESCO organized a high-level event to develop the tools to advance #wellbeing through the positive social impact of sport. This conference followed the launch of our #Fit4Life Alliance, engaging partners worldwide who believe the crisis of inactivity, #inequality and #mentalhealth must be addressed, and who recognize sport as a space that can drive this change. ➡ Day 1 of the conference marked the launch of our ‘Social Impact of Sport’ report, a crucial step in building the business - and government - case for sport as a low-cost, high-impact solution for delivering #sustainabledevelopment that deserves impact investment. 💡 Here are some key takeaways from our findings: -🏅 Sport for development programmes generate up to 20% higher rates of school attendance and can increase labour supply by 10%; - The social return on sports can be over three times the amount of its investment; -🏡 Adolescents who play sports are shown to more often help their families, neighbours and relatives, meaning sport fosters #communityengagement 💪 ; -🚴♀️ Sports have a positive impact on the environment: cyclists’ impact on CO2 emissions is 84% less in a life cycle approach. These results, coupled with the conclusions from our ‘Global State of Play Report’ and ‘Recommendations on Quality Physical Education (#QPE)’ draw a quite dramatic picture. QPE plays a key role in fostering lifelong physical activity, improving #youth mental and emotional well-being, and developing critical life skills. However, the report reveals that only 1 in 3 secondary school students #worldwide meet the minimum requirement of physical activity per week as per #UNESCO ’s Guidelines. Sports also remains one of the worse sectors for gender inequalities ❗ : girls are 42% more likely to drop out because of negative experiences in sport. Many women and girls feel unsafe, with 21% of females (compared with 11% of males) reporting having experienced some form of sexual abuse at least once as a child in sport. This is unacceptable. ➡ Day 2, The Ministers’ Forum, saw the engagement of almost 50 ministers of sport from around the world 🌍 , discussing the role of the government and actions to put in place to ensure the benefits of sport and physical activity are accessible and enjoyable by everyone in society, free from discrimination and abuse. I want to thank all the ministers that so ardently participated in the discussions. After this very successful event, it is now time to turn the programmes and policies discussed into actions. The change must start now. We must begin to recognize and draw investments into the #powerofsport.