Sports-based youth development

Sports-Based Youth Development or Sport-Based Youth Development or SBYD is a theory and practice model for direct youth service. Grounded in youth development, sports psychology, and youth sports practice, SBYD aims to use the sport experience to contribute to positive youth development. Sports-based youth development is similar to sport for social development.

Origins

The term "sports-based youth development program" was coined in 2006 at a summit sponsored by Harvard University’s Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency (PEAR), Sports PLUS, and the Vail Leadership Institute. SBYD programs were defined as programs that “use a particular sport… to facilitate learning and life skill development in youth”.^[1]

Characteristics of SBYD Programs

SBYD is based on the idea that sport programs should be intentionally designed to ensure youth have a positive, not negative, experience.^[2] SBYD programs are defined as sports programs with the following features:

• Physical and psychological safety
• Appropriate structure
• Supportive relationships
• Opportunities to belong
• Positive social norms
• Support for efficacy and mattering
• Opportunities for skill building
• Opportunities to foster cultural competence
• Active learning
• Opportunities for recognition
• Strength-based focus
• Ecological and holistic programs
• Integration of family, school, and community efforts^[1]

Others have applied best practices in youth development to the sport context and defined the factors most likely to facilitate psychosocial development as when youth are:

• Engaged in a desired activity with an appropriate environment (context)
• Surrounded by caring adult mentors and a positive group or community (external assets)
• Able to learn or acquire skills (internal assets) that are important for managing life situations
• Benefiting from the findings of a comprehensive system of evaluation and research^[3]

Organizations using the SBYD model can have different specific goals such as improved health, education, and delinquency prevention. Programs are often implemented in the after-school setting but can also be implemented in schools. SBYD programs do not need to completely devalue the competitive aspect of sport, but winning is not the central focus of the program. Often SBYD program target populations that typically have fewer opportunities for sport participation such as females and youth from low-income communities.

References