Sport Development

Fundamentally, sport development is about providing opportunities for individuals and communities to engage in grassroots physical activities in terms of what can be described as 'the common good'. When appropriately conceived and managed, sport allows participants to optimise their physical fitness levels and has the capacity to provide people of varying ages with valuable social experiences. People who work in sport development, therefore, share a similar goal of motivating individuals to participate in sport for purposes of health promotion and wider social benefit. However, as we will see in this chapter, the purposes, values and desired outcomes of sport development are not static; indeed, the more recent move to sport-for-development indicates a fundamental move away from sport participation as the key objective and towards involvement in sport as a vehicle to achieve desired social outcomes. Indeed, the principle goal of sport-for-development managers today is the deployment of sport and physical activity programs to engage people from varying ethnocultural and socio-economic backgrounds, within which ideals of interpersonal respect, intergroup harmony and community cohesion are crucial