 All right, well, we'll continue this, what I would call, a fabulous discussion. My name is Kathleen Kenist, and I am the gender advisor here at the Institute of Peace. Yes, I will be asking gender-related questions. But really, what is so exciting about this kind of event, USIP really sees itself as a convener. And today, we have scholars, professionals, practitioners, students, very important part of this dialogue. And we are really sorting out what is our common ground, what are our common understandings. And we're also illuminating the gaps. That's what this kind of event is all about. We are moving, I think, this nexus of sports and peace building forward, not only thinking about sport as a vehicle toward peace building, but thinking about the ways we define peace building and the dimensions in many of these countries that we can engage sport as a part of a process of dialogue. We are going to continue our discussion, and we're going to try to bridge some of that macro and micro level. We organized this particular panel to try to look at what's happening in terms of the organizational, institutional space out there. What does it look like, where we come from, where we headed? And we have three fabulous panelists here this morning. We're going to begin our dialogue with Nina Bishop, who is the Director of International Sports Initiatives at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the Department of State. Nina has been doing this for really the last decade, and she has many links here with the Institute. One of our leads here at the Institute was really her first funder. So we are. We'll give you all the money. Yes. So it's important to understand where this funding comes from. Our second presenter this morning is Amy Farkas, who is with UNICEF in the Sport for Development Department. And she also has been looking at this arena for the last 15 years and figuring out ways to integrate this in terms of policy with governments, not only about sport related to conflict, but really expanding our dimension here and looking at the relationship between disability and children's rights. And then our third speaker this morning is Brendan Tuey, who is the founder of Peace Players International. Now Brendan is going to take us from the kind of organizational, institutional, the big players and look at how a smaller player begins to integrate these dynamics, these funding sources, and really look at the future and really set us up for our third panel, looking at what are the demands on smaller NGOs in terms of metrics and moving forward. So I'm going to ask Nina to take the podium here. I'm going to ask you to stand up. And we're laughing because Nina is expecting twins in a month or so. So we're going to ask her to set the scene and talk about what's been happening at the Department of State and also looking further back into her background and also forward. So Nina. Thank you. When I actually came to the State Department, which is in 2001, sports was not something that existed there. Their program is about 15 years ago, but they no longer existed. And at the State Department, it's under the rubric of public diplomacy, which is actually where I kind of want to kind of draw the definition of how we actually use sports there. And when I got to State, I couldn't imagine that we weren't trying to use sports as a public diplomacy tool. And we actually define public diplomacy there as we're trying to reach out to people that we don't have a relationship with or that we're trying to find a tool we can use to reach out to people, purely to start a dialogue. And everyone's going to define peace building a different way and think you can find a public diplomacy anyway you want to. But our whole kind of essence and the reason we can actually do these things is because under the Fulbright Hayes Act of 1961, it says that mutual understanding between countries is what we were trying to do. So when I came to State, I thought it was really interesting that sports wasn't even thought of to be used. And actually, Mike Graham, who works here, was in budget. And I said, oh, I want to start a sports department and pretty much everybody laughed, except for Mike. And so we got a little bit of money to start with. And then it's kind of gone on from there. But so at the State Department, how we see sport is we want to start a dialogue with an audience that is not normally reached by any of our other programs. And that's primarily our goal. I think sometimes sports can forge a path like nothing else, but we don't overload sport with potential that it doesn't have. I mean, sport to us is it has potential, but it alone doesn't bring peace. And it alone doesn't keep peace. We see ourselves kind of as contributing to an effort that's out there that other NGOs and governments and organizations are doing. And sport is our engagement tool. And for us, engagement starts at grassroots. So the big reason we actually tried to use sports originally is because a lot of our State Department programs target audiences that are more elite, they're English speaking, they're adults. So the whole premise of sport, well, let's use something to reach out to young kids. Our target audience is overseas, basically. It's seven to 17-year-olds. We don't have an English language requirements. We don't have an educational requirement. The idea is for our embassies to have a vehicle to reach out to an audience that they haven't been able to reach before. And so our whole premise was, let's start grassroots. Let's see what we can do. And the office, I started in 2002. We actually have three different programs. One is a grants program where people like Brendan and peace players come in. And it's for any US-based 501c3 can come into our grants competition, which we have annually. We have an outgoing program, which is called Sports Envoys, where we send athletes and coaches overseas to put on clinics for youth. And then we have an incoming program, which is called Sports Visitors, where we bring youth and coaches to the United States. Since the grant program we've given out about 80 grants since 2002, for our sports visitors, we've had 40 programs with over 600 participants from 44 countries. And outgoing, I've sent 120 athletes and coaches to 40 countries since 2005. So what we've definitely seen is our embassies have embraced this as a way to reach out to these individuals that they would normally not have reached before. And we kind of see them as these are maybe future leaders, maybe not. But the idea behind the whole exchange is this is about what sport can bring to you. It's about learning about respect for diversity. It's about learning about leadership, learning about teamwork. It's not about being the next great soccer player. So we want to be able to spark a dialogue with these kids through sports. And to look at our results, I think that it's hard to say we have more like anecdotes and people to people of what we've been doing. But it's been pretty interesting, some of the feedback that we've gotten back. But one thing I will tell you, I think what we have learned is we love what we started. We love the spark that we started, but we also recognize that the State Department is not here to do this. So we work with the private sector on every single thing that we do. Every single exchange that we either bring in or send out, we work with the Sports League or Federation or an NGO to help us accomplish our goal. And then our wish is that they'll pick up and carry on without us being there. And so I think that a lot of, so it's kind of, two-tier, we want to start a dialogue. We want the dialogue to continue. And we want people to be engaged. And so we've kind of seen a lot of that happening. But to talk about our audience a little bit more, we have gender equality, no girls, no money from us. So if you're going to have a program with the State Department, you have to have young girls. Our target age range is very young, like I said. We are looking for kids that are interested, not proficient, but then, and we look at other things they might be facing in their country, which we can use sports to help them overcome, whether it be street violence or HIV AIDS, or it's, you know, or drugs, we look at it as, let's use something else and try to bring sport into it. And then we can help them maybe deal with some other problems that they're having. Our programs are designed with elements basically, well we do have clinics, but every element, every program on incoming has a conflict resolution session. And that conflict resolution may have to do with, I mean, it's different for every country. Sometimes it's, the individuals actually maybe not have ever met each other in their own country. And so they, this will be the first time where they sit there and they'll like try to get along amongst themselves. I brought 30 kids from 13 countries for a World Cup exchange and it was really interesting because a lot of them were from countries that wouldn't normally talk and we made them room with someone else from another country. And so it was kind of this whole different dynamic that they were experiencing and then we were just kind of using soccer as a common tool for these kids to play with. And they still speak now on the listserv and that was in 2006. So we also always have team building exercises. It's really interesting to see how even people that come in as a team aren't really a team. And so it's interesting to see how people interact or we mix them with their American counterparts. Once again, I mean the whole goal is just kind of learning about each other as kind of different countries. We always actually do a Title IX session for all of ours too. Most countries, it's interesting, they were the only ones with Title IX they don't understand it but they all say we're surprised Americans had to fight for anything. We thought you had everything. So the fact that women, they are just a gas that, you know, oh, women weren't allowed to play. It's really interesting to kind of see how that resonates with people although they know, it might not exist in their country or they don't get the full grasp of it. And we also do a disability piece. We always put a disabled athletes or sports to show that opportunity should be for all. And so it's in kind of in this group of a program what we're trying to do is show them that all these great skills you get out of sports and these leadership qualities and this teamwork is, these are values you can take on to other parts of your life. And we're not bringing someone over here to be the next great basketball player. Although I will tell you, sending a big name basketball player is great to start this when we send people overseas. But I think that, you know, generally, you know, this is why, and I know this whole discussion before was about the Olympics. Competition is something we steer completely from. No competitions at all. Cause for us there's basically, it should be no winning or losing in our public diplomacy or our, and then the bad side of sports comes out. I mean, I want to, you know, I came over here to beat you or let's do two out of three or so we stay away from all competitions and keep it as basically scrimmages or we mix the countries together, you know, the Americans will play with the Lebanese kids that are here. So we try to just, it's all about, there's definitely not a winning or losing aspect to us. This is just basically, we're using it as, like I said, it's a tool for us to reach out at a grassroots level to people. And I don't think I've ever, you know, we've ever found a country we haven't been able to work in. We were asked, I was given money to work with Iran. And I think people were really like, oh, we don't have an embassy there. It didn't matter. I mean, we all have sports federations. Our sports federations have had relationships for years. About 70 Iranians over. Their government and our government, no one said no to a sports exchange. And then it was really interesting. And actually, I get the most interesting comments. I think one thing that's just on one last note is, the structure of our country is so different from everyone else, the way we're set up sports wise, that that leads a lot of people to really learn a lot about America. I had an Iranian girl here and she didn't understand we didn't have a ministry of support in this country. I didn't understand that I couldn't tell the NBA what to do. And it's funny, I'm in this room and we were in Utah and they're like, you know, hey Nina, go tell the deputy commissioner. And I was like, you think I can tell some of these guys what to do? But the Iranians thought, hey, I'm the government and I control it and I have the money. And I was like, yeah. But it was really funny because they definitely did and they had dinner, you know, and like I will sit at her table and so that kind of whole concept that the government doesn't control it is definitely a foreign concept. But the young woman said to me, she said, well, you know, how do you get to be an Olympian? And I said, well, anybody can be an Olympian in the United States. And she said, well, I don't get it. And I said, sure. I mean, it's on your own. Your family supports you. You go. I mean, you have to have a job. The government doesn't pay for you to do this. We're not, you know, we don't set you up and say you're gonna be an Olympian. And she said, well, you know, I said, you have to want to do it on your own. And your family has to be behind you and you're paying your ice time. And she said, but I don't understand. You guys are so good. And I said, it's called free will. We play sports because we want to. We play it because it's fun. We play it because we have the drive and we want to do it. And we haven't put the weight of our country saying if you fail and this is over, that concept is extremely hard for other people to understand. And I think every time we bring someone over, whether it be Russia or China or whoever, the whole idea that our government is does not control our sports in this country is something that's definitely hard for them to understand. But I think it's valuable for them because I think the whole piece of, in what we try to do too, if you can keep the fun in the sport, then we can get the kids and we can keep the dialogue going whereas as soon as it becomes the big competition, then I think that's where some of the dialogue is lost and the rest comes in. But, and that's in general what we do. Great, thank you, Nina. It's very helpful to begin, you brought some new ideas to the table, the no competition message. I don't think we've really begun to explore that one yet today. And of course this cross-cultural dimensions, the relationship of the government with athletes and sports in general. Amy, I'm gonna turn over to you now to bring us into the dimension of your work at the UN and also your background in looking at this for a long time. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here today and to have the U.S. Institute of Peace looking at this issue. Both myself and UNICEF, we were both very committed to sport for development. And I will tell you a little bit about UNICEF's perspective. Personally, I have worked in post-conflict situations. I have worked in Kosovo specifically between 2002 and 2003 and I did look at the way that sport can be a tool for reintegration, rehabilitation, reconciliation. I think I said the three R's. And I will save that for now, but it is very much a part of me. I do have a background with disability and looking at getting the Serbs and Albanians to play together, but also to live and interact in a very meaningful way. But let me start by talking about UNICEF in our work. Sport for Development for Us is founded on the fact that play and recreation and sport are a right. They come out of the convention of the rights of the child. They come out of the convention of the rights of people with disabilities and a number of other mentions in other conventions. This is absolutely foremost for us because in any country or situation we go into, we need to make sure that they have safe spaces to play and to access that right. We work with governments very much in that regard, but also at the community level. Sport is also this tool that we talk about. It's sport for development. What is development? You can define it as you wish. But for us, sport is very much about helping to achieve the millennium development goals. For over 20 years, since the convention of the rights of the child was passed or adopted, we've been working with partners to ensure that children and youth have this opportunity to access, but to also enjoy. And we do it with a lot of partners. We always work with partners on the ground as the UN. So we work with governments. Some of the key, we also work with development agencies and one of them that's leading in this work is very much the Swiss Academy for Development. We also work with NGOs and civil society organizations. We also work with sport organizations. In developing countries, we often work with the most popular sport in the country, trying to use the popularity to get key messages out to youth. But in the US alone, we actually have some really key partners. We work with all the major leagues here, both to raise funds, to raise awareness, and to get means out to other countries by which then we can do the work. We can actually use sport as a tool for development. So I just wanna commend a lot of the US partners that we have for taking on this initiative and really supporting it. How did UNICEF move into this area? Well, we're responsible for looking after the good of youth and children around the world. We need to ensure that when the structures are not in place, there is a parent or there is an organization or there is a body by which we can help governments, our key partner, look out for the children. And so what do we do in terms of sport and peace building? We try and provide psychosocial support, both to those affected by conflict and in conflict, or involved. So we've heard about child combat and stay and I'll come back to that. We also try and use sport to teach key life skills, whether it's in schools or in communities, but often we find that around conflict situations, there's an absolute absence of formal education settings. So we're often doing it out in the community or in their local communities or local areas. We also, when we teach life skills, we try and focus on what is missing, right? So what is it that they need to be a good citizen? What is it that they need to be active in their community? And when conflict arises, oftentimes, there's a new set of needs or a new situation, so we try and adjust that. We also look on building friendships and relationships through sport. For us, it's very much a convening tool. We have brought different opposing sides together and we have seen changes. But we also wanna address stigma and discrimination through sport around conflict. The child combatants is an area where we see a lot of discrimination once they enter their communities again. And we also wanna return normalcy to their lives. Children that have been affected by conflict, and this isn't a situation of conflict, but Haiti's a perfect example, where we are seeing just the sense of having something fun and pleasurable, something they know deep down inside of them how to do. Just being able to be in a normal environment creates a huge benefit for them. So where have we come from? I'm going to start, and what are we doing is really what I wanna present. And I'm gonna show you a video to try and explain. We look at the three R's of Galting's Model and Conflict. We look at all the different phases of a conflict. But specifically, one example is from Uganda. You're watching UNICEF television. During years of civil conflict in Northern Uganda, schools were closed, entire communities moved to safety in displacement camps. Now with the fragile peace returning to the Lira district, families are going back to their homes and schools are reopening. But many of these children have been traumatized by the conflict. Some of them abducted by insurgents and forced to fight and returning to a normal childhood might seem impossible. These kids have had their lives torn apart and the support they need at the moment is psychosocial support that will help them reintegrate into their old family life, the life that they had before. 14-year-old Samuel Opedo spent four years in a displacement camp with 10 of his brothers and sisters. He says many bad things happened in the camps, fires, diseases, many people dying, and things he can't even talk about. But now for Samuel and thousands of other students in this district, organized games and sport competitions are helping to transform their schools into effective centers for rehabilitating their communities, encouraging nonviolent ways to resolve disputes and forging strong bonds between parents and schools. Sport competition helps the child to forget the past and helps all of us, the community, to focus on the present and the future. In this project supported by UNICEF, sport competitions and game activities are promoted among 50 schools here, encouraging children to go back to classes and rebuild their lives. Samuel says sport and games have brought him together with new friends and opened his mind to think about positive things, stay out of trouble and do well in school. Children and their parents determined to leave their unhappy past behind them, assisted by the simple pleasures of games and sports. In Lira, Uganda, this is Gary Stryker for UNICEF television. Unite for children. So this is just one example I would say of the psychosocial support methodology that we use sport for or the purpose. We've also gone in and created recreation days, particularly in Gaza. These are just some examples and the effectiveness we can talk about. We also are known to create child-friendly spaces, particularly in conflict. These are spaces that take on a unique design depending on the culture and depending on the location, but they have to be safe places where the children go and play. Many things happen there, from education to recreation, but it's absolutely critical that these are set up in a conflict situation and UNICEF is leading on that. And that's also to make sure that girls and boys have the safe space because what we find is that we do not always target the gender issue, but we address the gender issue and we want to make sure that girls are in a safe and comfortable environment. And we also teach life skills often with our partners. And I come back to the issue of child combatants because for just for today, this is the one area where we have quite a bit of experience. And I was recently in Sri Lanka. I was able to witness a project by which we're undertaking with a NGO called Cricket for Change. And what we do is the government actually in Sri Lanka, unlike in other situations, is actually processing or the majority government is actually processing through the former LTT child soldiers and they're putting them into these one to two week camps as a transition back to their local communities. And what we're doing with Cricket for Change, Cricket being the most popular sport in the country, is we're actually putting them in an intensive sport program for that week, which teaches a variety of life skills. And the effectiveness has been really significant. And we also see that they lose a lot of their identity and their labels when they come into this and they reform and rebuild them. So it's a very powerful tool if you do have a group that is together and going through a staged process by which we can assist and give them and teach them and have them develop their own life skills as we call them. We also are very well known, I think for our sport in a box of recreation kits. These are just a set of equipment we either manufacture or put them together locally if possible or we send them in from Copenhagen from our distribution center. And we try and give what's needed most to make activities happen quickly and effectively. And I will say that we're reviewing that box right now to make sure that it is age appropriate and a bit more culturally sensitive and gender appropriate. So that's exciting. The other thing I'll mention quickly is that UNICEF, even though it doesn't have to do conflict, we are very concerned about the issue of child protection in sport. We are looking at whether sport breeds and whether it can support ensuring that children are safe. So without too much detail, that isn't an area of concern for us and we are addressing it. Where are we headed? Well, we're really scaling up our sport for development work. I can say that I'm the only full-time staffer at UNICEF looking solely at this area, but we just brought together 40 colleagues from all levels and everyone's fully committed. We're moving forward with a new strategic framework. We're looking at how to work better with our partners. We also are developing guidance for our internal, for the thousands of UNICEF staff to understand better how they can use sport for development and their country programs. And we're trying to make it a key component of the country programming cycle. Some key challenges for us have been actually the same as what NGOs find, which is convincing governments and donors to look at this area. We truly believe that we do have some evidence and that we have examples and that we have decades of experience, but we also rely heavily on other organizations to help us quantify and qualify that. And we would welcome more evidence and more partners to discuss this key area. Where could we use help? We really could use help in what I've just mentioned, which is the evidence. Even though we're out there and we're doing it and we're supporting it, you have to realize our core responsibility is child survival. It's not sport for development. So we need to rely on other organizations and institutions to find ways to build up this evidence base. We would love to see a meta-analysis done. We would love to see long-term research studies done. And more dialogue, having the US Institute of Peace take on this is fantastic. Looking at ways to create guidance as a result of this would be fantastic as well. So I will stop there, but just going back to Kosovo, I mean, I think what's really important for us to remember is that it's about the process. When it comes to using sport and peace building, you can't take things, create superficial environments or experiences. And that's what we try to do in Kosovo. We try to bring the Serbs and Albanians together to play sport and we try to create a dialogue. We were extremely effective in getting them to talk, informing friendships and getting them to see each other as an individual. That was easy to be honest. We had assistance from who we needed to make the security situation and everything safe. But ultimately it was the political environment which hindered them from moving beyond their initial beliefs and understandings. So in the end, I would say we were unsuccessful because we couldn't change the community or the society. And as you know, possibly there's a lot of restriction of movement in the country. And therefore these friendships exist and I almost felt guilty at the end for creating friendships where they can talk on the phone but they can't see each other freely. So I just wanna put this in the context of looking at the whole picture when you start not creating unrealistic expectations, creating structures by which we know work. But what about the other political issues that are gonna be key components from the long-term sustainability of it? Thank you, Amy. That is another set of issues that we really need to bring to the foreground, the rights of children's safe spaces using this as a part of the process of the Millennium Development Goals. I'm gonna turn now to Brandon who has quite a history over the next decade of really being, if you will, in the weeds with children who day-to-day live in divided communities and Peace Players International has worked with over 48,000 children in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Cyprus, here in the States and the Middle East. Brandon, help us connect some of this macro with the micro. Thank you. My brother and I founded Peace Players about nine and a half years ago and we started out with about $7,000 raised from family and friends and started a much bigger program than we probably should have and every couple of weeks we battled to figure out how we're gonna make payroll. About a year and a half into it, we get a call from the Laurier Sport for Good Foundation that we had sent in a grant request in probably six or eight months prior saying, hey, we got it. We like what you guys are doing and we wanna fund you. So we're gonna write you a check for the next two years for $60,000 a year and fund all your local coaches in South Africa and we're like, probably the day before we had finally had our, what we thought would be our last conversation saying we don't have any money anymore, we can't do this, we're gonna have to, or we're actually gonna have to close up shop. Now since then, I think number one, we've come a long way, but two, we've seen a big move from the kind of individual grassroots supporters to the institutional partnerships. We work with Nina in ECA and with Amy and UNICEF and we've seen a lot of evidence of government and institutions being ready and willing and wanting to support and be involved in this type of work, support for peace building. So for those of you that are practitioners, there's definitely opportunity there. It's hard. You gotta show success prior to getting support for the most part. So the question is, well, how do I do that? And maybe you just have to be a little bit crazy and get lucky and figure out how to pull something off for a while and so you're able to get kind of long-term partners. What I'd like to do is talk briefly today, not so much about PPI, but about important things that we've learned in the field. Some key components to what we feel are effective peace-building efforts using sport, key challenges that we face in the field, and then just a little bit about evaluation and measuring outcomes, because I know that's gonna be the focus of the next panel. As it's definitely mentioned, so we're in four locations, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Israel in the West Bank, and Cyprus. Got the idea in Northern Ireland, working in Belfast, and I think it was alluded to earlier, that basketball in Northern Ireland is the one real neutral sport. Both sides will play soccer, but they play in different leagues. Catholic kids will play Gaelic sports. Protestant kids will play rugby and cricket. So we were able to get Protestant and Catholic kids together to play basketball. And neither side felt like the other side owned it. Started our first real, what was playing for peace now, peace players program in South Africa in 2001. Went back to Northern Ireland as our own organization in 2002, the Middle East in 2005, and Cyprus in 2007. I'm not gonna get too much into the reasons why sport is such a, I think, effective way to bring people together. I think, number one, that's already been discussed, and two, I think we ought to be preaching to the choir. I mentioned the funders. So again, when we started out, begging our family and friends and people we knew for money, about six months ago, we got word, but it just became official. USAID's Office of Complicate Management Immigrations are gonna fund about half our program management of West Bank over the next three years. Again, a huge get for us for a lot of reasons, not just the funding part in terms of the legitimacy in terms of the ability to use that to bring on other partners. It's a big, big deal. I mentioned Llorious. There are other kind of them and Adidas, our core partners. And again, without these institutional partners, as those of you that run any kind of organizations to know that you have money, not just next week, but next year and two years from now, it's a big deal. It allows you to, a lot more flexibility, a lot more comfort in what you're doing. And again, International Fund for Ireland, UNDP. So again, there's evidence here. We're able, these organizations, these big institutions, these governments are supporting this type of work. And just recently, we're now working with the State Department and the Aspen Institute on a public-private partnership called Partners for a New Beginning around the U.S. outreach to the Muslim world based on Obama's, or President Obama's Cairo speech. So Aspen came to us and said, we want to do something with sport. Would you all be part of it? Again, not so much talking to peace players, but about I think the value that people see in this field and sports ability to do really good things, whether it be peace-building, outreach, leadership development. Some keys to success. And I think if there's anything that I think I might know when I'm talking about it's this. A lot of efforts have been done the wrong way. And we did it the wrong way in the beginning. Right leadership is key to any type of grassroots, rather than grassroots development effort, but around peace-building and sport. If you don't have the right people leading the programs, delivering the programs, it's not gonna work. And what do I mean by right people? I mean locals. And I mean locals that have the credibility, that have the knowledge, that have the relationships in these communities to be able to do it. If you have it done outside in, it's not gonna be sustainable. It's not gonna be authentic. It's not gonna work. I believe they need to be consistent. So our programs are year-round. Again, not so much talking to people. They're year-round for boys and girls, age 10 to 14, 10 to 16 in some areas. But because what we're trying to do is get, number one, get these people to see each other as people rather than objects, to develop relationships, to develop friendships, that can't be done well in one-off-type environments. It has to be something these kids, they see each other consistently, they develop the friendships, they're seeing each other as, you know, this person's a lot more like me than they are different. And I don't think that's capable of happening if it's not something that happens more than once, that happens in a consistent year-round, progressive manner. Leadership pipeline. The good leaders, they're tough to find. So I think what has to be part of these programs is developing the future leaders. So what we've done is created a leadership development program. Again, it works differently in the different areas, but primarily for 16, 17, 18-year-old teenage boys and girls, training them as, number one, the next leaders of the program, the future coaches, but also as the peer mentors. So you have these kids going through these programs, but they see people that are just a little bit older than them, not only doing it, but reinforcing it and coaching them. And it also gives a place, what happens when these kids graduate the program? Well, this is what? They become the leaders, they become the assistant coaches, they become the future leaders of the program. Community involvement and ownership, you know, goes along with the right leadership, but one of the wonderful things about sport is that the community is involved, the community witnesses it. For these types of, you know, peace-building transformation efforts that the communities don't feel like it's theirs, like they own it, they're directing it. Again, it's not gonna be authentic, and I don't think it's gonna work. Lastly, although it seems simple, it's really important to make it fun. The more kids aren't having fun at these, I mean, number one, it's sport, so you don't have to work all that hard. But, you know, if kids aren't having fun, they're not gonna come back. You don't, I mean, in some places, you don't need great facilities. You don't, I mean, we're trying to work to create better infrastructure in the places that weren't, you don't need a whole lot of infrastructure either, you just gotta be a little bit creative. And again, have it delivered by people that are trained and know the terrain. So that same foundation that funded us when we were on the brink of not existing anymore, the Laurier Sport for Good Foundation, came to us about the same time we had started talking to this group, the Arbor Journal Institute, that does work with for-profits and non-profits around community, workplace, conflict transformation. And we started talking to them, but wow, this seems like a really good fit to what they're doing, their philosophy, the people that were involved in the leadership. It seemed like a really good fit. So we got to talking about Laurier's, and they were interested in how to use scale, this type of effort, how do you support initiatives that allow their partners not only to grow, but to develop revenue-generated, sources of revenue-generations. So we started talking kind of with both groups, and what we are now just forming, actually we're a year into it, is a partnership to develop a peace-building toolkit that number one helps us to go deeper and become better. We've tested it this year, this past year in Israel and the West Bank. We've found really, really good results. We're now rolling it out to other sites, and we're also commercializing it. So we're gonna work with other organizations, government institutions to help train them, to work with them, to use these concepts to either enhance their own for peace-building efforts or develop new ones. And again, the objectives, and again, it's simple, but I think it's really important, helping people to see each other as people rather than as objects. And that's the core. If you look at one thing you're trying to do, it's that. Now that's a starting point. Once you're able to say, I see my teammate as a person, that's not the end point. It's okay, how do I go from me seeing the teammate as a person to the whole group as people? So if I'm playing on a mixed team, and I'm in Northern Ireland, I'm a Catholic, and I see my Protestant teammate, and I'm becoming friends with that person, I can also say, well, that person's the exception, but I'm gonna still have the same view of the rest. But once you get to the point where you know what, I'm developing these friendships, I'm seeing these people as people, I'm not just basing on what happens on the court, I develop a really kind of lasting understanding of friendship, not only them, but of their community and their circumstances. Then you're moving towards, wow, now I see the people as people, not just this one person, it's not an exception. Then the next step is, okay, how do I get what I feel and what I know and what I'm learning and take that back to my home, my community, my friends, where what you're constantly getting reinforced with, no, this isn't right, let's think the other way. And that's where I think we are right now, is how to do that and we'll work with our manager, both in our own programs to figure that out, and obviously it's gonna be different in different locations. But I feel really optimistic about where we're going. Key challenges I'll end up with, again, I talked about getting people to trust their experiences as the real things rather than what they're hearing from their family and communities. Peace building is really difficult, and it requires a long-term investment. And if you're not gonna, be there for the long term, if you're not gonna do the right way, you can actually do a lot more harm than good. Sensitivity's on the ground and that's why it's so important to have local people that know the terrain that had a relationship with your leaders. Funding, I don't wanna sound like we've got it figured out, we're still struggling for funding every day. Risk, you're in tough places by nature of the work that you're doing. Measuring outcomes and we'll talk about that a little later. And then again, scaling, how do you go from working with your participants, your communities to having a broader regional effect? And I'll give you one quick example of a way that I think we're doing that. So we, in Northern Ireland, we're now working with the Soccer Association, the Gaelic Football Federation, and the Rugby Federation, which are all in their own ways segregated to make them inclusive, to help make them diverse to bring, for example, to get Catholic kids playing rugby. And again, we're only a small part of that initiative, but we're part of it. And you're talking, we're able to do that over the next 10 years. Now you're talking about how you scale this type of effort, island-wide and have a really massive impact. Thank you. Thank you, Brendan. I think we moved our story along here with Brendan's thoughts, especially about a different kind of evidence-based, and that's from funders that indeed governments, private foundations, and other sort of institutions want to be involved in this kind of effort. Now we're gonna open it up for questions and answers and comments, but as people are getting to the microphone, I'm gonna take the liberty as moderator to kind of drill down a little bit about this question of how we define sports, because Nina, you said we're about no competition. And Brendan, the last part of what you were talking about, you're talking about very competitive sports. And are we, when we bring this peace-building notion to sports, are we redefining sports? Do we need another term for sports? Because I see these as part of a continuum, but not necessarily the same. So if we could begin there, and then we'll open it up. I think you're just doing it in two different ways. I mean, competition, we couldn't do what we do without competition because the kids working together, you have a goal of winning that supersedes the fact that I'm not supposed to like who I'm playing with. But in different types of models, you look at competition in a different way. And competition means sport, we haven't gone into it, but sport can serve as a divider just as easily or more easily than serving as a uniter, so you gotta do it the right way. So I don't think you have to define, I mean, there's obviously the difference between sport and play. And we're more on the competitive sport and play, I think has a different connotation. But I just think you have two different models. Thank you. I actually do think, and that's where our audience is different a little, we're not about these great athletes that are here to compete to win. I mean, we're reaching out to kids that maybe just have started playing the sport. And so it's definitely not about winning or losing aren't us against them. And we don't want them to think, you know, I want to play two out of three because I wanna come back and I wanna beat this kid. Our kids are just learning sports and they're not proficient and that's not what we're looking for. Kids that are proficient, that are gonna go out there and say, I won, I won this championship. So I think maybe the audiences are different here for what we're doing because we're definitely not at the level where we're looking, at least State Department doesn't look for any kind of elite athlete whatsoever. We are definitely dealing with grassroots kids that are just starting and they're, we want them to learn how to be a teammate first and how to work and wanna play. There are angles not for them to win. Thank you, Amy, did you wanna weigh in on this? Sure, I'll just mention that I think the broader perspective is you have sport development and you have sport for development and you have a continuum. And on that continuum, you clearly have a role, I think, at every stage of it for a competitive league club team athlete sector. And then you also have, for that competitive side, you also have the chance for community-based organizations to take a role. So even in sport for development, which is what UNICEF focuses on, we rely heavily on our partners, FC, the Football Club of Barcelona or Manchester United or the NBA. We rely heavily on them for many things. So there is a role, but you have to be very careful on what is the objective or the outcome that you're trying to achieve and that's where sport development versus sport for development fits in. Excellent, it's very helpful to just see that full continuum in action. I wanna open it up now for Q&A and also for any comments. So if I can begin with you, if you will also be aware that we are webcasting or videotaping, so just see if you could address your comment also to the audience so we have this all on video. Hi, my name is Anna Raguse. I am a program coordinator at Meridian International Center and also a graduate student in conflict resolution at George Mason University. And my question would pertain probably to all three speakers. What kinds of tools or methods do you use to measure the effectiveness of your programs and what sort of revisions are made to adapt to the social and cultural changes that take place in each of the countries that your programs are running? So thank you. Thank you, Anna. I'm going to turn also to Craig and you can ask a question, comment, and then we'll open it up for discussion. My name is Craig Zelzer. I'm a faculty member in the conflict resolution program at Georgetown and thank you very much for your presentations. One quick comment and then a question. So the comment is that I think to what degree are academic institutions preparing the next generation of both scholars and practitioners in this field? And I just want to make a plug for Georgetown but also hear from other academic institutions. We recently got funding from another organization Generations for Peace that is doing innovative work in sport and peace building to have both masters level fellowship students to go out in the field and do field research and internships and also postdoc Canada who's on the last panel. So if anyone's interested, please talk to me but I'd also like to hear what other programs are doing because we need to build up the credibility of the field and part of developing the credibility of the field is advancing scholarship and practice and encouraging younger scholars and then kind of a question for everyone. To what degree in your programming are you talking about peace building as an explicit process versus implicitly in terms of and kind of to make that more concrete if you're doing a sport project is it all about peace building or it's all about sport and you kind of implicitly talking about peace building within the sports-based activity and have you tried different methodologies and which one works, obviously it's context specific? Excellent questions. Now I'm going to turn back to the panelists. There were two questions laid out here. One is in one sense foreshadowing the afternoon looking at the effectiveness of tools and whether you can actually find some metrics to that and your adaptability to various conflict settings and of course Craig's question looking at a very interesting question about explicit versus implicit processes and Brendan, I'm going to start with you and we'll just move down the table. You may answer both of them. Why don't you just pick one and because I'm looking at a few other questioners out there or commenters. Sure. The measurement piece is really important and there's a few different ways that we look at it. Let me start by saying that the peace building field in general, I think struggles with this issue not just the sport for peace building fields. So that is a challenge because I think as the panelists alluded to earlier, people are naturally skeptical when you talk about sport as a tool for development so you're kind of fighting that battle. We look at measurement, number one is being critical but two in a few different ways. The first is the outputs in terms of the numbers of kids, their demographics, how many hours together and so forth. Secondly would be the testimonials, what are people saying, the kids, the parents, the communities. Thirdly, short-term attitude change based on how they perceive one another. So what does a kid believe beginning the program? What does the kid believe at the end of the year when he or she departs and how does that compare to a control group? And those for us are done in partnership with local entities. So local entities that have the expertise that do the surveys, the measurements, the reporting. Another way is what are you making happen that wasn't happening before? And I'll give a quick example in, we run twin basketball clubs in East to West Jerusalem and we partner with the Jerusalem municipality to run a league and up to that point, this was two years ago, up to that point, the league, no Arabs participated because there were some arcane registration rule which precluded them. So we worked with the Jerusalem municipality to change that rule. We ran the league and because the people, because the rules changed and because the people believed in us, the Arabs believed in us, they played. So now that happens on a regular basis and it looks like it's gonna happen for soccer. So that, I would argue, how do you measure that? Maybe just say, these are the number of kids that weren't playing and these are the number that were playing after the fact. Lastly, and I think that the most challenging way is the kind of the long-term tracking and community transformation. So that's it, your kids are in your program for two or three years, they're 30, what are they doing now and how has your program changed that person or those people for the better or even for the worse? And then two, how does the community that you were looking that you've been working in differ from another, you know, differ than what it was or differ than another community that doesn't have peace players working there? We're working on those issues, they're really challenging. I know there's a lot of people that know a lot more about this than I do in this room. Thank you. I wanna keep going on, but I'm looking around and I see six people and so if the panelists could just make their remarks brief. We'll get everybody involved too, thank you. Very briefly, I'll take the second one and I'll just say that as a UN agency we encourage and support peace building efforts. We also would support a sport for peace building projects or initiatives but we very much remain committed to the needs of the children. So unless it has an objective which would look at what are the current needs in that current conflict we probably wouldn't get engaged, we would stay impartial. Thank you, Nina. Which question is left? I don't, I guess you had to hear the question about academic institutions getting involved. Just so you know for us, probably half of the people that apply for our grants are academic institutions. So we have a lot of academic institutions that wanna be involved in our grants program. They have to be two way, that's our prerequisite. You have to do something in country and you have to do something here in the United States. You have to stay within our demographic or age range and the boys and girls. But at least half of all of our requests that come in are from academic institutions. They don't generally have a scholarship component with them because we do not have English language as a requirement. Thank you, that's very interesting. I'm going to take three more questions and I'm gonna ask the panelists to identify which one of these you want to answer. You don't have to answer them all. So if you will, introduce yourself and your question. Thank you. Please. We have our first year masters at Georgetown but at organizations that use sport for development. And there are a lot and some of them are very small. So my question and I think any three of you would be able to answer this. To what extent do you tap into existing networks when you are looking to make movements in your organization and to what extent do you try and be a separate entity? And how does that work in the bigger picture? Interesting question. Thank you, Sarah. And over to you, please. I'm going to turn first. Thank you, Diana. I'm going to turn first. Amy, I'm going to have you on first. You want to take one of those questions? Maybe it's most appropriate for me to take the networks. We do work with large existing networks and in sport for development, which is a huge area. There are the networks. There is the International Support for Development and Peace Working Group, which is government-related. There's one which is a website for the Civil Society, which is the International Sport for Development Platform. There are specific ones on HIV in sport, specific ones on peace-building in sport. Our key is that we evaluate on the ground in the current situation what is most needed in terms of partnerships. So we always reevaluate. But we always look at who are the existing leaders, mainly in terms of evidence. And that's where you become very stand out if you're an NGO or an organization who has the evidence. Because organizations like ourselves, we need to be told that this works. So you really need to communicate with us in an effective manner. So we do work a lot with the existing, and I can go into detail with you later. Nina? I think on the transference, since we're basically all about the value to get out of sport and not about the competition and the skill level itself, that's the most important to us. We find it's interesting on our report back from kids that come here, and we just got some back from the girls that returned, and they said like a large part of their program had to do with leadership skills and was specifically towards, this was an all, and a lot of some things we do are just for girl programs specifically, and they'll go back and say, I started my own leadership group or I've put together my own plan to run my own community club based on what you taught me. So we see them taking kind of, not I'm a better soccer player and I got to this round in this tournament, but we see them taking the other skills that we've given them. I brought like a little girl from Pakistan, she wrote me and she said that I've learned so much, I've learned more in two weeks than I ever could in a lifetime. My team didn't learn just about soccer but so many other things that are essential in character building as an individual. I've grown as a person and I owe it all to the sports exchange. My parents noticed the change in me when I got back and they're supportive now too. So for us, that's all we're trying to do. It's not about if they can go back and even if they have more confidence than when they came here, that transference for us is a win, so. Brendan, can you address the training question that Eric brought up? So we have a curriculum that's delivered on the court that we're working with, as I mentioned with Arvin Gerber, that actually takes place, it's not something that's separate from the basketball and that's really important. It takes place as part of the basketball drills, as how the coaches are trained and what was really interesting was at first the coaches were resistant because they saw it something as separate or something like that. But the more that they have figured out this actually makes their teams better, the more buy-in that we've got. And then kind of the next step of the curriculum, there's the on the court and then there's the off the court in terms of kids doing service projects together, kids, and this kind of goes into Diana's questions as well, the relationships that are formed apart from the basketball side of it. And the leadership development kids actually, part of their, one of their requirements of being part of the program is to do demonstrations and go to other groups and say this is what I've learned, this is what we do with our own kids. So that's a great way to both sustain that curriculum but also how you get, how you look at how to transfer for their everyday lives. Thank you, Brendan. And I'm gonna take these as our last two questions or comments, here you go. Thank you very much everyone with your programs. It's the microphone. Do we know if this mic is on? Okay. I'll just use my loud voice. That's all right. One of the struggles that when I talk to people trying to do programming quite a lot on the ground and especially we're a met in a former conflict area is the idea of who gets to participate and who doesn't. And so we have many socially marginalized children, not just even in conflict and suffering like former practice, former child soldiers, those that are disabled, even girls and young women. And basically we wanna look at how do you decide who gets to participate in these programs, especially community-based programs. So basically where does the opportunity to participate stop and exclusion begins? Thank you, Dean. And our last question. My question is sort of- Can you introduce yourself? Oh, I'm Kate. The question is about all of you talked about youth and children and involving youth in these programs. How are your programs making sure that parents and adults are also getting involved? Because helping, I mean, it's kind of a relationship between them that allows the children to continue to support and also the children to convince their parents that these ideas that they're getting from the programs such as peace building are being transferred amongst both groups. Thank you, Kate and Dean. These are two important parts of the story that the marginalized youth and then how do we get parents and community in this loop? Brendan, you wanna take a stab at this? It's interesting, the opportunity to participate, it's a good question. And it's heartbreaking because you have these kids and the challenges in getting the kids, turning the kids away. So we've based it not on who the best kids are, it's in terms of talent level for the sport, but who are the best kids and types of leaders and types of determination. And that decision is made locally by local coaches and we do whatever we can to the kids that are really good kids and the kids that really wanna participate and find a way for them to do so. And it can be heartbreaking at times though, but the rule of thumb is it's not the most talented sport individual it's the kid either with the best leadership ability or the leadership potential or again, but that's that those decisions are made locally. Thank you. Amy, I'll just add to Brendan and say that for us it comes down to what is your target group and what's your objective. And that each program has to have a clear set of objectives. So with people with disabilities or with girls and women or with whatever group you think is marginalized in the current context, the program needs to be made inclusive. And by design it needs to reach the intended objective. So it's very hard for me to say, I mean, we don't run programs so I can't speak specifically, but I do think it comes down to ultimately the design of the program. Thank you, Amy. I mean, for the State Department it's easy. If you don't have girls, you don't do a program. And so our embassy puts together our programs on the grounds and a lot of countries we deal with are majority Muslim. We use separate clinics for girls if they can't be with the boys. We'll do whatever we have to do. So it's definitely, we don't have any exclusivity. It's all about being inclusive. And it's definitely not about the skill level. So, but we definitely put them together to reach the comprehensive audience and it's the embassy that will work to do that. Nina, I wanna take that into a question on United Nations Security Resolution 1325, which is marking its 10th anniversary in a few days. And one of its major thrusts is that women need to be at the peace table. I wonder if we have a connection with, girls have to be a part of these teams and women have to be a part of the peace table. And I don't know if it's even, I think that's a question that you, it's answered differently culturally where you are too. I don't think, you know, ours is that everyone gets to participate. It's not that, and we don't hit the girls against the boys or the girls have to be there with it. You know, they just have to have the equal opportunity to be able to do it. So I don't know if even, in some of the countries we work with, they are very hesitant to let the women come forward and they don't wanna let them be on TV and they don't wanna show them. So we obliged by everything that they have there, we're not trying to say you have to do something completely different than you've done. We just wanna give them the opportunity. So I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's, you know, right to go in and say we're gonna mandate this and that you move forward and these women have to be leaders here. I think that, I don't know how far you would take it in the each individual country that you would have, but I think that the, we just try to make sure that given the circumstances that were given there, everyone's been able to give the opportunity. Equal opportunity, yes, thank you. I'm gonna allow one last question, but it's gonna be so brief. Thank you. Great way to end this discussion. Have organizations and institutions, I appreciate that question. And I'd like each of you, if you could weigh in as your final comment here for this panel. Yeah. Any both. Let you take the leadership here. I'm laughing because we really focused a lot on the World Cup as UNICEF. I'm not sure how visible it was, but we have a lot of examples of what we did. We were part of, we created child family spaces in the fan parks to try and create a space where children out of school would have a chance to engage in a safe manner. We looked at child trafficking. We did a red card against that, a campaign. I could go on and list. I think the legacy for us was transforming FIFAs, a little bit more of FIFA's approach to this. And I wanted to comment earlier on mega events and say that I can commend the IOC as well, the International Olympic Committee. Legacy is becoming a part of every major event, mega event, so sorry for taking a minute. The cricket is also doing it, but the point is in South Africa it was to make sure children were safe. That was our number one legacy as UNICEF and we worked with dozens of partners. So it's too much to describe, but I really felt that there was a strong legacy for children. Excellent. I think the jury's out. I mean, I think they've gotten, you've got these football for hope centers. That was a core campaign. You've got some great stadiums and great sockers, fields. The question that you have is what happens to them? Number one, were they created with the local community? So how much does, how much they feel like it's theirs and what types of long-term programs are gonna be there going forward? And I think I'm a little bit skeptical, but I think there was a lot of attention and a lot of resources put into it. So you're hopeful that it works. And while we weren't involved at all, I honestly think the legacy is that sports is truly global, the fact that they put on the World Cup and pulled it off. And I think that that was just a great showing right there that it took off and that it worked. And so I think that it's definitely, sports is everywhere and it's just expanding. We'll see if South Africa's the Olympics. Yeah. Well, thank you, panelists. I think you'll agree with me that this is a marvelous group who offered us a lot of ideas on sport as public diplomacy, sport as the right of every child, sport as a means of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, a convening tool, a transferring skills tool. It has so many different dimensions and that's why we're here today to try to begin understanding all of the different parts of this puzzle and moving the dialogue forward. I know lunch is right beyond those doors. I wanted to let you know that this is not just any lunch, but this is a lunch called Fresh Start and it is Fresh Start. It is prepared by former prisoners who are starting a new life and we really like this caterer. We like the meaning of it and I think they have great food. That's probably what you're thinking about. We're gonna break for about 15 minutes, pick up your food, it's a box lunch and then we're gonna come back for a luncheon presentation by Charles Huvner. So thank you so much for your great questions and dialogue this morning.