Sport and Employability Report
When providing sports based interventions for young people, what are the key components needed to produce the best outcomes around employability?
Comic Relief has been funding Sport for Development projects internationally and in the UK for the last ten years and has made nearly 200 grants totalling about £27million. Sport has been used to achieve a broad range of social outcomes, and Comic Relief has identified a number of areas where it sees sport having the most impact:
• Fighting discrimination and promoting equality;
• Reducing violence and increasing community cohesion;
• Developing young leaders to inspire others;
• Improving knowledge of, and access to, health care;
• Increasing access to education; and
• Supporting people at key transitions in their lives.
One element highlighted within ‘transitions’ is the potential role that sport can play in providing relevant skills, training and pathways to employment (or social enterprise based alternatives) to a broad range of marginalised and disadvantaged young people. Comic Relief currently funds 10 projects working around this issue in the UK and 10 internationally.
This report presents the findings of research commissioned by Comic Relief and undertaken by the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, along with Professor Fred Coalter, and Dr Geoff Nichols (University of Sheffield), between March and June 2015. The purpose of this research was to help to provide an evidence base about effective practice around sports interventions and employability.
The project was commissioned in order to address the following research question:
When providing sports based interventions for young people, what are the key components needed to produce the best outcomes around employability?