Youth Sports Leadership is a three-year sports programme designed to teach young people essential skills and behaviours such as teamwork, leadership, and persistence through sports teacher training and participation.
The Youth Sports Leadership programme is delivered in partnership with the Youth Sports Trust International, an international charity passionate about creating a future where every child enjoys the life-changing benefits that come from sport. Together we have delivered the programme in over 60 countries where it has had a transformational impact on the students and teachers who take part.
In Saudi Arabia, 117 sports coaches and teachers and 306 students have taken part in the project across 60 schools so far. During the 2019 programme, which will run for 6-weeks programme from 10 November – 10 December 2019, we expect an additional 120 coaches and teachers and 300 students to participate. Also 180 coaches will take Youth Sport Award training.
The 2019 programme has grown significantly, in addition to Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern province, the programme has now been expanded to Taif and Tabuk, furthermore, the number of females being trained has doubled.
The three-year programme is rolled out in three phases.
Phase one - Local Trainer Training: The first step of the programme sees the training of local coaches and teachers by a group of international trainers. These coaches are trained in coaching and mentoring skills which they will use to enable 14-16-year-old students to become ‘Young Sports Leaders’.
Phase two – National Trainer Training: Throughout the second phase, selected local trainers undergo advanced training work to become national trainers so that they can also coach adult learners.
Phase three – Continued Training and Sports Festival: The national trainers that were trained up in phase two will now in turn train up local trainers and coaches. These newly trained local trainers then progress to train more Young Sport Leaders and they in turn run festivals of physical activity for younger children in their communities.
As part of the Youth Sports Leadership Programme we run the Youth Sports Awards, which recognises and celebrates the important skills that young people acquire through the programme.
In Saudi Arabia, we’re partnering with the Ministry of Education, who recognized the importance of unleashing the potential of their students through sports, in line with Vision 2030 goals to improve sports participation rates across the Kingdom.
“A wonderful programme that stimulates creativity, success and good sportsmanship. It presents sports and educational values that help with building a new generation of educated sport leaders”.
Local school teacher from Riyadh
"The Youth Sports Leadership Programme is an inclusive programme that encourages sports participation of all young people so that they can learn essential life skills in a playful way, and help us build a generation of passionate sports leaders from a grassroots level."
Waseem Kotoub, Senior Programme Manager, Culture & Sports