Innovation through Sport: Promoting Leaders, Empowering Youth (ITSPLEY)

Implementing Partner: CARE Bangladesh, CARE Egypt, CARE Kenya, CARE Tanzania (THROUGH THE CORE INITIATIVE)

Young women play handball in Bangladesh. Photo: CARE Bangladesh

Funding Period: January 2009 – January 2012

Amount: $3,300,000

Purpose: Assist youth in developing and practicing leadership skills through sport-based activities, while strengthening promoted local organizations in Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya and Tanzania.

Objectives

• Youth, especially girls, participate in sports-based activities and develop leadership skills
• Increased advocacy for social change involving girls, through public sports demonstrations and competitions
• Increased partner organizations' institutional sustainability through dedicated fundraising and training to build the capacity of the organizations

Collaborating closely with CARE's Signature Program, Power Within: Empowering Girls to Learn and Lead, the Innovation through Sport: Promoting Leaders, Empowering Youth (ITSPLEY) project works in four countries, using extracurricular activities and social networks to promote leadership skills, physical health, and personal development for girls. The project builds on CARE's existing country activities, adding a key sports component. It promotes the breakdown of socio-cultural barriers that result in the systemic marginalization of girls and women.

Photo: CARE Bangladesh

In Tanzania, ITSPLEY activities serve as a vehicle to address poverty issues, gender inequalities, and socio-cultural barriers that prevent marginalized girls from attending school. In Bangladesh, the project uses sports-based activities to impart young people with information on healthy practices in the area of reproductive and sexual health, and to mobilize communities and local organizations to support these practices. In Egypt, the program centers on using sports to build leadership capacity among young women and girls who have traditionally been excluded from public affairs. The project works to build effective social relationships and expand traditional gender roles. In Kenya, the project promotes the development of leadership and business skills, self esteem, safe sexual practices and reproductive health, and the reductionof stigma associated with HIV. The project also promotes the formation of public private partnerships.

At the end of the project, it is expected that girls who have participated in project activities will have measurably improved their development. And, organizations who serve them will have a broader funding base.