IYLE - International Youth Leader Education
Location
Provide youth worldwide with the opportunity to: learn to understand, tolerate and embrace diversity through the common thread of sport.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Sport
Other
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2004
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Project URL (include HTTP://)
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram:
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Sport is trivialized
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Include through sport
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic:
This field has not been completed
Name Your Project
IYLE - International Youth Leader Education
Describe Your Idea
Provide youth worldwide with the opportunity to: learn to understand, tolerate and embrace diversity through the common thread of sport.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Provide youth worldwide with the opportunity to: learn to understand, tolerate and embrace diversity through the common thread of sport.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
IYLE brings the (non-competitive) sport world closer to the rest of the NGO world and vice-versa. We started with the idea that sport has a great potential to promote social change. We believe this potential is often neglected. Therefore we undertook first steps to inspire stakeholders to look beyond the positive aspects of physical activity and use sport as a method to enhance social change. Further we encourage the NGO world to use sport activity as a tool to engage people in reflective processes, promoting social change.
The topics that we are dealing with are universally relevant. However, the realities participants live in are very diverse. Consequently we take each individual in their learning process and create a common ground of understanding.
We work with a learner centred approach that transfers the knowledge of an individual to a group and further onto larger groups. (i.e. like local communities or member organisations, etc.)
Unique aspects:
Events are organised by youth for youth
Offer different possibilities within ‘education through sport’
Empower youth
What are the existing barriers, the biggest problem, your innovation is hoping to address/change?
One of the barriers for IYLE is the perception of sport, today. Sport is commonly associated with competition, which includes the negative variables such as doping, corruption, over commercialization, fan scandals etc.
This tainted image is contradictive to the one of sport as a ‘tool for social change’ or ‘development through sport’, yet it remains the most popular.
With this in mind, the IYLE programme shows youth the strength of sport and its’ potential, not only to educate, but to also create understanding.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
IYLE displays the positive aspects of sport through its programme. In its present form the IYLE programme consists of the following:
• Youth leader training (Short and long term youth leader trainings)
• Youth camps
• Youth and sport forums
• International co-operation activities with other youth organisations
• Coordinator of the EVS programme
• Creation of training manuals for youth leaders/guidelines for youth activities
• Networking platform (The new idea YOURCE)
Each year (since 2004), a minimum of four of the above activities successfully take place. The IYLE project offers diverse events to provide opportunities for all interests. ISCA understands that people are different; some want work experience away from home (EVS), some want training courses and some enjoy debates (forum). This structure helps reach more youth as well as hear their opinions/ideas on a greater range of topics.
All the events are lead by qualified facilitators who ensure that activities such as teambuilding, creating common understanding, discovering different cultures, are present in every event.
How do you plan to grow your innovation?
Use technology to broaden reach and impact of IYLE work. Until now activities have primarily been limited to European countries, as per donor demands/restrictions. Innovative use of technology and new donor support will enable us to expand our virtual and ‘in action’ activities to a global audience.
Through this mean IYLE will develop a larger network so to reach across to more youth. Both the programme and youth themselves would benefit from this growth, as it would allow for staff to receive greater opportunities for two-way communication as well as, receive more feedback or ideas for the future from youth.
New partnerships with like minded projects and organizations is part of the current strategy and work priority for future growth of IYLE.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
Youth leaders have new opportunities, tools and inspiration for using non-formal education through sport to promote civil society development and social change via IYLE.
What impact has your innovation had to date/or what is your intended impact? Exactly who are the beneficiaries?
IYLE has received compliments on having a good balance between participants from sport organisations and non-sport NGO’s represented at our events. A common feedback is that participants appreciate the methods we use and see potential in our approach. Many of our participants have used some activities on their return to their home country. In this regard we see and are motivated by the snowball effect created.
Moreover, our communication network gets broader and broader, we started out reaching a few hundred people and now we receive over a hundred application forms for each IYLE event and have reached over 6000 persons in the last year.
It has been noted that the IYLE programme brings a new dynamic to the ISCA member network and more organisations want their youth to take part so they can contribute with the development of their own organisations.
IYLE intends to provide youth with an experience which challenges them to grow, reflect and gain tools to create this snowball effect.
How many people have you served directly?
Quantitative results (from the past 3 years):
- 541 Youth
- From 41 different countries
- Of which (Gender): 254 Males and 287 Females
- Of which (Age): 5 (15-17yrs), 360 (18-25yrs), 176 (25-30yrs)
How many people have you served indirectly?
Indirectly the number goes up to 6000 (over the past 3 years).
This includes:
- All the information disseminated through the newsletter, our annual magazine.
- All the information to the member organisations.
- The events attended, for networking reasons.
- As well as the website
In addition to individuals served directly and/or indirectly it is important to note the number of organizations (NGOs) who have been part of IYLE. Please see attached PDF entitled “List of Organizations Involved With IYLE”.
Please list any other measures reflective of the impact of your innovation?
IYLE activities are planned and implemented in cooperation with partner organizations. Organizing partners should have a clear gain and advantage of hosting, organizing or contributing to such an event. As a result, outcomes of specific themed activities are often formally integrated into working agendas of regional, national and international decision making bodies. For example, the Declaration of the European Youth and Sport Forum is presented to the meeting of European Sports Ministers. (Please see attached pdf Declaration EYSF)
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
IYLE has used a simple application process for participation in all of its activities such as forums, camps, etc. IYLE activities to date have averaged 66% rejections of all qualified applications. It is not the aim of IYLE to be elite or geographically restrictive, but donor placed limitations can create such an effect. It would be ideal that certain event types have financing instruments to allow all qualified applicants chances to participate, even if more events are necessary.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
IYLE is financed through several means. The first is ISCA’s own unrestricted budget. The second is donor contributions to the project. The third is through individual activity partnership agreements whereby activity hosts provide co-financing. The last means, but least used, is activity participant fees.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization.
ISCA maintains a Secretariat in Copenhagen with three full-time staff, one part-time staff and 1-3 full-time international volunteers. The annual operating budget of ISCA is 375,000€.
The ISCA Secretariat is led by a Secretary General and functions as the hub of organizational activity, including priorities of the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee is democratically elected by the General Assembly.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
Until now, the demand for IYLE activities has outpaced the supply at a rate of 3/1. It should also be considered that efforts to expand our contact network has not been active in the last year for capacity reasons. We see the future demand continueing to increase.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
The main barriers of financially sustaining IYLE are rapidly changing public policy and trends. Such rapid changes make long-term funding (multi-year grants) more difficult to achieve. Increasing proposal frequency is also increasing the general administrative workload and 'fundraising' costs. In other words, raising funds for a multi-year programme of activities is more efficient for both the donors and applicants as compared to individual proposals for each activity of a programme.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
The International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA) is an organisation bringing together sport, culture and youth organisations from across the globe. It is a Non-Governmental, non-profit umbrella association of its member organisations, which values the power of sport for all. Members come from 70 different countries.
ISCA wanted to give ordinary people a chance to meet through sports and culture activities across borders and boundaries for reasons of fun, health, development, education and not least social reasons without having to qualify for their participation. In short, the aim of ISCA is to create international sports and culture activities to achieve intercultural understanding. We call this "Sport and Culture for All".
Most ISCA member organisations are based on volunteers, and numerous of those are young people. From the beginning, non-formal education has played an important role in the organisation. In 1999, ISCA and a number of member organisations launched the 4-month training course called “International Youth Leader Education” at non-formal adult training schools in Denmark.
The success of this training course let to motivation to develop the area of youth work within ISCA. The organisation maintained the contact with you, hosted volunteers and interns and soon created a youth committee. This innovative idea originated from a presentation by the ISCA Youth Committee at the ISCA General Assembly in May 2004, the IYLE Steering Group started implementing a large scale youth project in order to empower young people to become active youth leaders in their organisations and in civil society in general.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material.
ISCA was created with the aim of providing an alternative to the increasingly performance-based attitude of international sports federations.
Its primary purpose:
- support cross-border understanding through sport and culture
- promote sport as a bearer of cultural identity
- encourage the broadest possible participation in sports and cultural activities for members
This proposal is prepared by non-native english speaking youth volunteers of ISCA!
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate? (this is confidential)
ISCA staff regularly recieve e-news from Social Edge and Ashoka. This contest was included in such e-correspondce. Our incentive to participate is the opportunity for a broader audience to give feedback and input to what we are currently doing.
Affiliation (please list all that apply)
ISCA is a member of www.sportanddev.org and ICSSPE.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Declaration EYSF 2007 - digital.pdf | 353.67 KB |
| List of organisations involved in the IYLE project.doc | 32 KB |
 | charijon said: IYLE was a great project that ISCA run. With that project ISCA made use of their sports related network and actively looked for ... about this Competition Entry. - 1036 days ago read more > |
| Kt said: ISCA or IYLE has a wonderful concept. I think it is a great idea to educate youth in a non-formal way by using sport, because that way ... about this Competition Entry. - 1490 days ago read more > |
Comments
ISCA or IYLE has a wonderful concept.
I think it is a great idea to educate youth in a non-formal way by using sport, because that way it may actually go in. In events like this youth learns without even knowing it. I completly agree, sport and activities can be used for education purposes, and the image of sport needs to be challenged.
I have been a participant in a youth event offered by ISCA and found the methods and tools used unique. I was just enjoying meeting so many diverse people and playing games, having discussions, working together and everytime we had a moment for reflection regarding what had taken place I was always amazed at how much you learnt each time! Its great to learning while just having fun with people from some many different countries!
I think it really works, the events provide us (youth) with a platform where we can meet and have fun with people you don't know at all because everyone has a same intrest in sport or everyone is at the same level because no one knows anyone else. And by the end of the event the group has formed a relationship with people from so many different places in the end I think no one comes out without having a more open mind. This concept brings together people and gets them to build relationships with people they may previously have had a predjudice against, by using sport is a tremenduse job.
In these events, you are always challenged, doing something positive and talking and hearing different perspective of how to get over the climbing wall or play a simple game, however, this simple action gets rid of barriers that in a discussion may still be there, the use of these activities allow for the discussions which take place afterword to be more inclusive of everone in the group...
For the people involved these activities are unforgetable!
IYLE was a great project that ISCA run. With that project ISCA made use of their sports related network and actively looked for connections with active organisations in other fields, NGO's, youth organisations, scouts, etc. This made it possible that at the trainings, seminars and forum this broad range of people met together and this contributed to a very enriching exchange and for potential networking in the follow up.
According to my information, ISCA is represented by apart people, who believe strongly in civilisation and culture promotion through sport. The intelligent fight for the materialization of their noble purpose, which I consider revolutionary and of interest for the world civilisation, fascinated me.
I have been convinced that ISCA selects with great responsibility and professionalism the partners with which it collaborates. According to my and my colleagues information, we consider that ISCA is, through the constant professionalism, one of the most respectable institutions from the domain of sport, civilisation and culture promotion at international level. The remarkable results are owed to efficient work methods through which it is carefully pursued the maximum impact of the promotion of ISCA’s objectives.
One great master told me, not long ago, that “on Earth a new evolved species of humans appeared that will contribute to a new progress of mankind”. I am convinced that I have met these people, organized in ISCA.
I feel honoured to wish a lot of success in all activities and steps that these members who form ISCA will go through. I thank them from all my heart for what they have done for me, as I believe all youth do that have benefited from the support of this special team.
I've been knowing ISCA for a couple of years now! It all goes back to the year 2006, my first European Youth and sports forum in Finland. It was a blast! I've been to a couple of european exchanges and i must say that the team was superb! Some of the facilitators went through the IYLE and other were locals to keep it all running smoothly. Ever since, i kept going to different exchanges organised by ISCA and I got to know some of the people a bit more. There is also room for experiments with new methods or methodologies in non-formal education, a thrue challenge for the little bit more experienced youthworker. I'm talking about the open space theory and the Ultimate inclusion fribee tool (2 of the things I learned through these experiences).
ISCA wants to make the world a smaller place, but for that you need some strong leaders! I've met a few and I think it's the effect of the european exchanges. People from different countries can really learn something from eachother. I studied physical education and for me it's also interesting to see how different or how equal we play games in different coutries. Funny things like Möllky and Kubb are nice things for a change! Anyway I must say that all of my experiences with ISCA have been very learnfull and still means a lot in my daily life! So big thumbs up for ISCA and IYLE !
keep on scoring!
I'll be YOURCE ! Till the end of time - oww you make me feel , shiny and new!
Greetz from Belgium