Silvestro
4/30/12
LGST Joe 231
Take Home Final Exam
1) In the case of Haiti I would develop a plus sport development program, geared towards the
primarily social and economic development and using sport to assist in these goals. The program would
work to aggregate best practices in post-earthquake Haiti for preventing the spread of communicable
diseases, education through the use of sport, and the prevention of both drug use and malnutrition in
Haitian youth. This expertise would be combined with teaching practices commonly used in sports, using
drills and coaching instructions to impart lessons about sport (teamwork between teammates whether they
be male or female, studying techniques for learning plays, conflict resolution) as well as lessons about
healthy lifestyle (washing hands before and after practice, caring for all injuries promptly, eating
appropriately). The program would target youth since their lifestyle choices are most easily changed, and
would use soccer as a sports medium for teaching since it is the national sport of Haiti and thus already
has legitimacy among the youth of the nation. Once established, this program would distribute material
goods (soccer balls, educational materials) and the aggregated knowledge to independent local soccer
programs. In return, these programs must send their coaches and league directors to a series of
educational seminars run by the program, in which they are also educated about lifestyle choices and
effective teaching tools in order to reach the most children.
2) Marketing for this program would target former and current sports coaches throughout Haiti,
contacting the organizers of schools and shelters in highly impacted areas in order to gain information
about existing childrens programs in each area. In areas drastically affected by the earthquake and its
aftermath these shelters will represent the center of disenfranchised communities, and obtaining access to
their inhabitants through contact with shelter leaders will maximize the number of people the program can
reach. The advantage of this strategy is clear directly accessing the shelter will provide access to
parents and children alike, and shelter residents will already be centrally gathered for educational
seminars and soccer training. Potential disadvantages include the political nature of shelters in postearthquake Haiti; it is likely that shelter leaders will attempt to demand personal favors or benefits in
return for access to their shelters. However, by working with the international organizations which fund
them (the United Nations and Red Cross) this program can minimize the risks associated with this
strategy for access. Once potential alternative is to try and establish separate shelters for parents and
children to live in and then attach soccer to the shelter, but this method would be cumbersome and incur
much higher fixed costs. When access to shelters has been achieved then marketing to parents will focus
on sport as a supervised activity for their children; by providing nutritious food and a safe environment
for fun and learning, the program will free up parents to continue to reconstruct their lives without
neglecting the children and leaving them in the crosshairs of disease and street violence. By coordinating
with adults interested in soccer or with a history of teaching or coaching in the area, parents will be
greeted by a familiar face when first introduced to the program, and this instant legitimacy will make
them more likely to enroll their child.
3) The first issue which President Martelly mentioned, gender equality, is an issue which can be
addressed directly on the field of play in a manner similar to the practices of PeacePlayers International.
By gradually assimilating boys and girls, first in the classroom and then on the playing field, the program
can encourage children to stop viewing others in terms of gender and instead identify with them as
teammates. This change in perspective should only be reinforced by the coaches and educators involved,
who must lead by example in the equal treatment of male and female players both on and off the pitch.
Rising rates of communicable diseases can be combated through the increased use of simple hygiene,
such as washing hands and caring for injuries with simple first aid. These practices can be reinforced off
the field in classroom instruction, using sports examples (washing hands before and after practice,
instructing players how to care for their own scrapes and bruises) in order to teach effective hygiene
practices. An important aspect of addressing this issue is making sure that materials for hygienic behavior
are available; first aid equipment and hand sanitizer should be made available as much as possible in
order to make the healthy decision an easy one for children to make on a regular basis and become
accustomed to. Poor education and high illiteracy rates can be combated through the provision of
materials for studying and teaching of effective study techniques; without one of these elements the other
is worthless. Players are often asked to learn plays and defensive schemes, and by educating the children
on how to learn these things more effectively (with techniques easily applicable in the classroom) and
attaching significance to the plays (using simple names for plays and having the children spell these plays
out as they run them, for instance) can incorporate effective more learning strategies into the fun and
engaging activity of sport. This is a concept already employed by South African youth soccer leagues,
and it has been met with measurable success in AIDS prevention. 1 Increasing rates of disability due to
malnutrition and disease can be combated through the provision of nutritional supplements to children, as
well as educating them about proper eating and cleaning habits. While having them eat supplements is
fairly straightforward, the lesson of proper nutrition can be tied back into sport itself; all athletes need to
refuel and take care of their bodies during play, and addressing the children as young athletes rather than
malnourished, impoverished children can make them more receptive to lessons about changing their
eating and hygiene habits. Once again, the programs provision of nutritional foods is essential in this
case without them the lesson of healthy eating will remain impractical and fail to impress upon the
children involved. Lastly, violence and increased drug use can be addressed through the lens of sport and
on field education. On a basic level, making the program as all-encompassing as possible (long,
consistent hours) will prevent children from spending free time being exposed to violence and druginfested environments in their community. Lessons of conflict resolution, team play and healthy living all
directly relate to soccer, and by incorporating these lessons into on-field and off-field education, the
program-educated coaches can leave the young players more cognizant of peaceful resolution and healthy
living both on and off the field of play.
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/sports/soccer/11aids.html?_r=4
4) While the validity, efficacy and success of the programs work with coaches and children may
be hard to measure in an unstable environment such as post-earthquake Haiti, comparing key statistics
within the player population against such statistics in the general population can reveal whether or not the
programs work has been impactful over a two year period. Given statistics about the general population
concerning murder rates, literacy rates, drug use and communicable diseases, a survey of players during
their time in the program can illustrate if reduced rates of sickness, violence and illiteracy are present.
Without the program for instance, rates of illiteracy among the children should closely mirror illiteracy
rates in the general population. If participants in the program demonstrate reduced illiteracy, it can be
inferred that elements of the program have positively impacted literacy among participants. A potential
disadvantage of this strategy is that the variable of program participation is hard to isolate; certain
communities might natural have higher illiteracy rates, creating a deceptively poor appearance for the
program in that area. However, the simple and impactful nature of this approach will appeal to politicians
eager for measurable improvement in these key areas, and if the program seems effective then potential
statistical issues with measuring success in this way can be overlooked for expediencys sake. An
alternative would be to institute some form of entrance and exit exam for program participants to measure
change in their lifestyle and abilities; but this approach would have a positive bias (as children who arent
impacted can drop out of the program) and the ethics of administering this survey to prove the programs
success internally are questionable. Overall, while perhaps overly simplistic, comparing easily measured
rates of violence, disease and illiteracy can provide evidence of the programs ability to prevent or reduce
these issues.
5) Before beginning, I am not convinced that sport is the appropriate platform in this
case. While I believe sport is highly capable of addressing secondary or tertiary societal problems such as
gender inequality and violence between racial or economic classes, it is unclear if Haiti has addressed its
primary problems as of yet. These include access to clean water, shelter and food for its citizens, things
necessary for basic survival. While the proposed program includes certain nutritional supplements and
education on hygiene proper eating, without the raw supplies of clean water, food and shelter the Haitian
people cannot properly benefit from this proposed program. An alternative to be utilized is the
establishment of more conventional refugee camps, spending money on proper medical supplies and these
essential food and drinks and organizing all members of the shelter into a more cohesive, functional
community rather than leaving them in a triage-like atmosphere. While this alternative might be less
effective in addressing the Presidents secondary concerns such as gender inequality and drug use,
primary concerns like housing and adequate food and water distribution would be addressed more
efficiently. Once the government and aid programs have created a more stable environment for all its
citizens then a plus sport program will operate much more effectively, using this stable societal base in
order to target children and impact them to a greater degree. Without food, water and shelter children and
adults alike cant hope to retain lessons about equality, violence, drug use and hygiene, meaning that an
alternative program focusing on providing these basic necessities might be wiser for Haiti at this time.