Changing the Game for Girls in Sport and Society
The Laureus Sport for Good Global Summit brought together youth leaders from across the world to share knowledge around coaching girls and gender equity in sport
The stage at the Laureus Sport for Good Global Summit, presented by Nike’s Made To Play commitment to get kids moving, had been occupied by Olympic and world champions; by leaders from the sports industry; by a chart-topping hip-hop artist. But one of the final women to speak had a different perspective about where the event’s real stars were sitting.
Kosovare Asllani will compete at the World Cup with Sweden this summer. She attended the Summit not just as a Laureus Ambassador, but as a participant – she had spent the day listening to sessions themed around gender equity in sport. And she understood the audience: around 300 leaders from some of the programmes supported by Laureus Sport for Good around the world, that in 2022 alone impacted the lives of over 244,000 children and young people.
“You are the real role models for these kids,” Asllani insisted, looking out from the stage inside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. “When they grow up, you are the ones they are going to remember.”
It was a reminder that this unique gathering of stakeholders from every corner of the sport for development sector is more than an opportunity to develop common strategies for mutual challenges: it is a celebration of work already done and of the people who do it, raising up vulnerable young people using the power of sport.
Less than an hour later, Asllani was making a crafty assist in a high-octane game of Ultimate Frisbee on the artificial pitches that face Tottenham’s stadium, flanked by the Olympic swimming champion and Laureus Academy Member Missy Franklin. An Olympian and a World Cup-bound footballer going flat-out at frisbee? Only at Laureus.
The Summit was hosted by Kely Nascimento, new Laureus Ambassador, social campaigner and daughter of Brazilian football legend Pelé, one of the original members of the Laureus World Sports Academy and recipient of the inaugural Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award.
After a full schedule inside the stadium, the delegates (and a few sporting superstars) made their way outside to experience a Laureus Sport for Good programme the way the young people they serve do – with the special joy that only sport can bring.
Those games were run by programmes from Japan, France and Germany, but the Summit was rooted in London, from the opening address of Mayor Sadiq Khan on the stadium’s giant screens, to the interactive workshop from Laureus Model City London, the initiative that unites a network of community sports groups across the UK’s capital.
However, London is only one of the Sport for Good Cities and stories were shared of the global, community-based success of this initiative, and the best ways for it to develop. That began with a case study by Sport for Good Chicago – an inspirational coalition between Laureus, local government, community programmes and one of the city’s sporting totems, the Chicago Cubs of Major League Baseball.
In breakout sessions, partners from each of the initiatives in Mexico City, Delhi, London, Paris, Hong Kong and a group representing the US Sport for Good Cities told their stories to delegates from grassroots programmes all over the world.
A session entitled ‘From Pitch To Policy And Back’ – with speakers including Mariagrazia Squicciarini of UNESCO and Fiona Bull of the World Health Organisation – shed light on the wider frameworks governing the sport for development sector. Live translation was available for some of the events – there were 43 different nationalities among the delegates, 24 languages spoken. And one common one.
“Sport is the universal language,” said Shannon Moloney, a former Tottenham Hotspur player and now the club’s senior global football development coach and a brand ambassador for AIA, a key partner at the Laureus Sport for Good Summit.
Shannon was speaking in a session run by Indochina Starfish, a Laureus-supported programme based in Cambodia. Vicheka Chourp, the leader of the project, took a group of girls to the stadium that was now hosting the Summit – where they led out the Tottenham first team as mascots, holding hands with Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and Hugo Lloris. “It was the experience of a lifetime,” said Vicheka. “It opened up their horizons and gave them a bigger dream.”
On a panel called ‘Why We Invest in Girls’ Leela Strong, director of Nike’s Made to Play portfolio, was joined by Honey Thaljieh, a FIFA executive and the founding captain of the Palestine women’s football team. Honey told a story that exemplified two key themes of the day – the importance of the role model and of coaching girls.
“I started playing football on the streets of Bethlehem when I was seven,” said Honey. “Everyone was against it – but I believed in the power of football. I saw hope even in the middle of the death and the destruction and the despair.
“I didn’t get my first pair of football boots until I was 22. Today I give football boots to girls who have never had them, and I know exactly how they feel.”
On ‘The Role of the Athlete in Inspiring Girls’ Laureus World Sports Academy Members Jessica Ennis-Hill and Nicol David, joined by motorsport pioneer Carmen Jorda, spoke of the influence their sporting success – as Olympic and world champions in heptathlon and squash, respectively – has had on girls and young women.
And in a session entitled ‘Outside the World of Sport’ the Laureus Sport for Good Summit welcomed for the first time a Billboard 100 chart-topper, as Eve Cooper joined on stage Noella Coursaris Musunka, the founder of the Malaika project in DR Congo, which is based around a school built to serve not just local children, but an entire community. Eve is a patron of Malaika and has visited DR Congo, where she wrote a song about the school, the lyrics to which remain a classroom wall.
The final session before delegates, athletes and industry leaders took up the challenges on the pitches outside, was around ‘The Rise of Women’s Football’ featuring Kosovare Asllani and Molly Bartrip, the Tottenham Hotspur defender. And for Kosovare, it was a chance to address the audience after spending the day learning about the work they do.
And she got it right. The Sport for Development leaders brought together in London for the Laureus Sport for Good Global Summit are heroes.
