This was my usual Saturday out-the-door gameday routine. Growing up as a girl in Midwestern America in the 1990s I did not think much of the opportunity to participate in sports. Maybe it was my father who had no idea how to raise a "girl" or the pride I took in always having scraped knees and colorful bruises after soccer practice. I had players Mia Hamm and Briana Scurry as my idols, so of course in my mind I was also on track to being a World Cup-winning star. I had the influence of my mom who played her way through college thanks to the passing of Title IX, the US law that prohibits discrimination based on gender in, and it created an infrastructure for women to pursue their passion in sports. I grew up surrounded by a world of strong female athlete role models. In my household sports was the norm, not the exception.

I have sports to thank for shaping me into who I am today. Sports, and soccer in particular, provided me with opportunities for self-discovery, life skills development, leadership roles, and the chance to be a part of many teams. Sport gave me an identity, a motivation, and a community I belonged to. And because of this powerful tool that I’ve found in my life, I now work in sport for development.

But as my passion for sport led me on a journey around the globe, seeking to share the same sense of belonging I found to more children, I quickly learned that it simply wasn't so simple in other countries or neighborhoods. Safe spaces to play were often hard to come by, challenging to access, and generally did not include many girls.

For a plethora of reasons, access to play is a challenge for children globally. As a seasoned community development practitioner and development officer at love.fútbol, a global non-profit and social enterprise dedicated to partnering with communities to create, reclaim, and redefine safe places for children to play, I have become keenly aware of the many barriers that limit children's ability to play. These statistics reinforce the urgent concerns around such need:

1. Outdoor play continues to decrease, dropping by 71 per cent in one generation across the US and UK (Brown, Play Deprivation Can Damage Early Childhood Development, 2018).
2. Female participation in sports remains limited in comparison to their male counterparts who receive 1.13 million more sporting opportunities annually (National Federation of State High School Associations, 2019).
3. A safe neighborhood has a direct correlation on children’s health, where children growing up in neighborhoods that parents consider unsafe are more than 4 times as likely to be obese (Lumeng, Julie C et al. “Neighborhood safety and overweight status in children.” 2006).

Further exacerbated by COVID-19 budget cuts to infrastructure development for community sport spaces, there remains a bleak outlook for the chances of the next generation of children's recreation.

Whether it's due to social norms around physical activity, stereotypes around who play is for, safety concerns around public spaces increasingly becoming locations for illicit behavior, or that no space designated for play ever existed, the challenge remains that access is the largest initial hurdle to overcome in order for play equity to begin to be realised.

What if we could bring communities together to solve this challenge and make sure children could play in a safe supportive environment? Not only then is a space created, but it becomes owned and activated, becoming a catalyst for progress both on and off the field. 

When we engage communities in driving the effort to create access to safe places to play, the lives of children and communities have an opportunity to grow and thrive. According to the most recent love.fútbol Annual Report, of participating community members, 92 per cent noted a positive association with an increased sense of physical and mental health, 90 per cent acknowledged an increase in their sense of belonging, 100 per cent noted an increase in access for girls to play, and 82 per cent felt that the space led to the development of new projects and social programmes in their community.

Knowing that it takes a village to raise a child, it's inherent then that it takes a community to create a safe space to play. These findings highlight the importance of collective action in shifting perceptions and generating local opportunities.

Through engaging communities around the creation of sport spaces, more than individual benefits of sport and play can be achieved and a broader connection can be threaded within communities through sport. Sport brings people together, helps build collective identity and unity, and can help weave a strong social fabric. love.fútbol mobilises vulnerable communities to take action through community engagement to sport spaces that become inclusive centres of community and lasting platforms for social growth. By partnering with sponsors, other non-profits, clubs and community organisations we are best able to achieve this mission in a sustainable and impactful way.

Sports for development can prove to the world that coexistence, collaboration, and community are the key components required to build a healthier and more sustainable future for all. It is in the togetherness that we sink or swim. Let us continue to capitalise on communities' own agency in generating access to play to further cultivate environments of wellness and belonging for all.