Sport & Curriculum Design

Designing a successful, girl-centred sport programme can be complex. While interacting with girls and developing bonds between them, you may have to have a few challenging life skills conversations with them; you may need to carefully consider whether your proposed sport of choice is the right fit; and you may be required to evaluate the risks, benefits and values of combining boys and girls.

Using a Life Skills Curriculum

A curriculum, or a set of sessions that guide facilitators and coaches on teaching a certain skill, idea, or lesson, can be indispensable for organisations working with girls, particularly those who want to put girls’ rights and life skills at the centre of their sport programmes. A well-designed curriculum can help achieve your sport programme’s objectives in a number of ways.

Karolina Sznycer, Barcelona Tennis Academy, UNICEF
  • Support on sensitive topics
  • Replicable training processes
  • Standardised programming

Case Study: Goal Programme

Goal equips girls with the confidence, knowledge and skills they need to be economic leaders in their families and communities. The curriculum is designed for girls aged 12-18 who are living in underserved communities and is typically offered on a weekly basis, over the course of ten months.

Since its launch in 2006, Goal has grown into an internationally-recognised global movement operating in more than 20 countries. Implemented by organisations around the world, the programme teaches girls critical facts about health, communication, rights, and managing their personal finances in order to help them transform not just their own lives, but those of their families and friends.

Goal Curriculum

The Goal curriculum is an open source, life skills curriculum divided into 6 modules which include interactive and play-based activities focused on key life skills. As a curriculum, it should be understood as a guideline and adapted to suit unique contexts. The curriculum can be found below.

NOWSPAR, Zambia

Quality of Sport

Some organisations choose to offer unstructured or non-competitive programmes to girls in the community, whereas others choose to formalise their sport programmes and offer girls an opportunity to gain skills and play in a competitive environment. See some characteristics and benefits to both of these approaches below:

There are benefits to both approaches, but ethically and in practice, programmes that serve girls most effectively are those that emphasise wellness over winning. Girls can benefit greatly from learning how to compete, how to win, and how to lose with grace. However, if your programme’s aim is to help strengthen girls off the field, growth and development of the girl must always be considered to be more important than winning or losing.

Characteristics:

  • Sports “buffet” with lots of choices for girls to try different sports and activities.
  • Flexible scheduling, irregular or infrequent training.
  • Events-based activities, such as sport days or celebrations.
  • Play-based programme with low-level instruction of games.
  • Unsupervised or led by untrained coaches/teachers without deep sports knowledge.

Benefits:

  • Familiarises girls with physical activity and play.
  • Non-threatening environment to try new things.
  • Generates interest in a lot of sports and activities.
  • Few resources needed (equipment, coaches, fields).
  • Low/no pushback from parents or community – does not challenge gender stereotypes.

Characteristics:

  • Single sport focus in single site or programme.
  • Consistent and frequent sport training over a longer period of time.
  • Structured teams that participate in leagues, tournaments, and other sports events.
  • Skill-based development emphasised and competition encouraged.
    Practices planned and delivered by trained, qualified coaches.

Benefits:

  • Progressive skill development and mastery build girls’ confidence.
  • Enhanced pride and commitment of being part of a formal sport programme or team.
  • Structured environment and sustained skill development optimal for teaching the transferable life skills including discipline, teamwork, learning from mistakes, time management, goal setting, stress management.
  • Extensive opportunities for leadership practice that give different girls a chance to shine.
  • Can create pathways to sport employment, such as professional contracts, coaching, refereeing.

Should I Mix Genders?

By necessity or by choice, there are times when boys and girls are integrated into a sport programme. It is important to be intentional when mixing genders and recognise that simply adding girls into an existing boys’ programme without considering their unique needs could be harmful for the girls as well as the boys. To effectively integrate girls and boys in programmes, you need to have a complete understanding of the social distribution of power and social expectations of both genders for the culture in which you are working.

Monica Thandi, Netball Development Trust, IWD 2017 Photo Contest