Sports Diplomacy: The Power of Play

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Through the IVLP Impact Awards Initiative, recent alumni of the International Visitor Leadership Program administer community impact projects that bring the experiences of their exchange program home to their communities and promote innovative solutions to shared global challenges.

On Wednesday, August 7, 2024, Meridian International Center hosted a virtual panel of IVLP Impact Awardees who discussed the importance of sports exchanges in promoting cross-cultural understanding and social cohesion. Arifé Yildiz (France) moderated the panel and featured panelists Kennedy Ouma Otieno (Kenya), Yuan-Ting Chang (Taiwan), and Pedro Cédemé (Haiti).

Some top takeaways from the program were:

“Sports Diplomacy is a diplomatic tool to promote peace and democracy, supporting U.S. foreign policy goals to expand access to education, economic equity and social opportunity and inclusion. Sports diplomacy connects with the universal passion of sports, to change lives, transform communities and inspire the world, as we’re seeing right now with the Olympics taking place in Paris.” - Kevin Orchison, Deputy Division Chief for Sports Diplomacy, U.S. Department of State 

1.Championing Women’s Inclusion in Sports

The session began with remarks from Kevin Orchison, Deputy Division Chief for Sports Diplomacy at the U.S. Department of State. He framed the panel discussion and highlighted that "sports diplomacy programs exemplify the guiding principles behind our national security strategy on gender equality and gender equity." Yuan-Ting and Arifé both had projects that focused on this issue in their communities, and they each worked to create more equity for women athletes and encourage greater participation in sports among girls.

To underline the importance of these initiatives, Yuan-Ting shared that according to the UN, "women make up 40% of professional athletes, but only 4% of sports broadcasts feature women's sports events, and only 12% of hosts were women. Additionally, women made up only 20% of sports journalists and less than 10% of sports photographers were female." Arifé also mentioned among the issues faced by women athletes that her project addressed: "the significant pay gap, the club resources--they're not the same [between men's and women's teams,] the communication and public image, we see it also for example in soccer: you will always be able to see more easily games where you have men playing instead of women. The price of tickets will not be the same, because we don't give the same resources, the same visibility to the women." It was issues like these that Arifé's project addressed by connecting athletes on the local women's club team in Lyon, France, with professional athletes, "The girls were really happy to have the opportunity to speak with professionals...to see that the problems [the girls] face, that these people, these athletes, they also had this, and how they overcome this, it really helped them." Yuan-Ting's approach combined an art exhibition, a mentorship component, and lectures on leadership and professional athletes' life stories to foster a wider discussion about gender inequality in sports in Taiwan. While she acknowledged the difficulty of measuring changes in attitude from the relatively small project's scale, Yuan-Ting did share a quote from an attendee of her art exhibition who was inspired by the photos of women excelling in martial arts despite the gender inequality at play in that arena. Yuan-Ting also emphasized the importance of role models, quoting the maxim 'if you can see it, you can be it' to underscore how crucial it is for young girls to see themselves represented in professional athletics, such as in her exhibition.

2. Sports Bridging Communities and Addressing Social Issues

By contrast, Kennedy and Pedro's projects used sports as a vehicle to engage youth in food production and civic engagement, respectively. Since Kennedy's IVLP project was focused on agriculture, he explained how this was his original goal in reaching out to his community in Kenya. Still, he quickly found that despite farming being a crucial way for residents to increase their household income, "to them, farming was so dirty, something they did not really want to be seen doing by their peers...we did a survey into what interests or excites the youth in that region...and football became the solution." Kennedy explained how the program grew, much like the seeds, fertilizer, and seedlings initially given instead of cash prizes to the winning soccer teams, into a robust program over time. "On the field they are football teams, while in their farms they are a youth group that has registered and is actually producing a lot of vegetables and planting a lot of fruit trees in the western part of Kenya."

Similarly, Pedro explained his project's origin story: "I saw that there was a gap in my country...I developed a mission to work with young people in Haiti...the sports federation no longer wanted to organize events in the region, so I decided to step up and do that." He explained why his IVLP Impact Award project focuses on schools, saying, "I figured that we needed to start with education if we wanted to help young people, and so I think that sports have the opportunity to bring people together."

3. IVLP Experience Empowering Global Change

Arifé participated in the IVLP project Current U.S. Social, Political, and Economic Issues for Young European Leaders III, organized by Cultural Vistas in partnership with Global Ties Arizona, Citizen Diplomacy Alliance, and WorldOrlando. She summarized the journey of IVLP and the inspiration that this can spark when she said, "We see that the IVLP experience goes beyond what we expect, and we go [to the U.S.] with some ideas, and we come back with a project in our heads and new contacts, new friends and that's really amazing." In addition to the ripple effects across the world created by IVLP alumni, before the participants even arrive, there are many people involved in planning the exchange as well; in this case, Pedro, Yuan-Ting, and Kennedy's IVLP exchange projects took place across three different years but were all organized by Meridian in collaboration with many communities across the U.S.

Pedro participated in the Youth and Civic Engagement project, organized in partnership with WorldOrlando, WorldBoston, International House, and Global Ties Akron, while Yuan-Ting's project, A Global Moment in Time- Reflections on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility, was organized with Global Ties San Francisco as well as WorldBoston as partners. She mentioned visiting the NGO "Strong Women Strong Girls" in Boston. She explained, "Especially in Boston, I just got some inspiration from there, and I want to implement [a similar project] in Taiwan and try to encourage Taiwanese young girls to participate more in sports because we believe that participation in sports can enhance one's own confidence." Kennedy was a participant in the virtual IVLP U.S Agriculture Trade and Food Safety in 2021, and shortly before speaking in the webinar, he returned from his in-person IVLP exchange, which was organized by American Councils for International Education in partnership with Global New Orleans, WorldOrlando, Cleveland Council on World Affairs and the Iowa International Center. In addition to having had impactful experiences with U.S. partners, Kennedy shared that a fellow member of his in-person IVLP cohort had already provided the girls' soccer team he helped found with equipment.

4. Blueprint for Success: Replicating Impactful Sports Projects

Panelists were asked if the basic models of their projects could be replicated in other parts of the world, and they all agreed that they could. Kennedy highlighted the effective strategy of using sports as the "bait" to engage youth on other issues "because sport is something that unites people globally" and is, therefore, a uniquely suited "entry point" to promote engagement on broader social issues. Yuan-Ting agreed, noting that a project like hers could benefit anywhere that faces problems similar to toxic masculinity in sports. Pedro said, "Thanks to my participation in the IVLP project, I understood that we can share...through workshops in the sports field, and we can replicate this project anywhere in the world and have the impact we want at the community level."

In closing, Kennedy expressed a desire for "exchange beyond the exchange" among the participants in the various IVLP Impact Award projects around the world and finished with a call to action: "We also really just want to invite [the audience] to join us from your country, you could be having similar thoughts, or probably similar challenges, just like ours. Try something! Try using sports and see results." Arifé echoed this sentiment, saying how sport is a powerful tool that can be leveraged to address various social issues, or as Yuan-Ting put it, "Sports is a common language for all of us."

“I want to share with you something that an ambassador said: It's that sports can bring nations together, so I really want to encourage people to use sports for diplomatic efforts, and I think that we can do a lot of good in the world.” - Pedro Cédemé 

If you have any questions, please reach out to the IVLP Impact Awards Team at IVLPImpactAwards@meridian.org.

If interested in attending more IVLP Impact Award events, click here.