• India
• Africa
• Pacific
• Caribbean
• Pacific Sports Partnerships

History

During the 40th Pacific Islands Forum in 2009, former Australian Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, announced the release of new funding of $15m over five years (2009–14) to establish and support sport partnerships between the Australian Government, Australian national sporting organisations, and Oceania regional sports federations and their Pacific Island counterparts.

Following this announcement the Australian Government, through the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and AusAID, established the Pacific Sports Partnerships (PSP) program as part of the Australian Sports Outreach Program (ASOP).

Structure

The PSP program aims to promote collaboration between Australian and Pacific sports organisations to strengthen grassroots sports activities in Pacific communities and improve participation pathways for players, administrators, coaches and officials.

The program has three goals:

• capacity building with committed local partners
• promote sustained increases in sport-related participation
• contribute to positive social development outcomes.

Partners

The PSP program focuses on partnerships with cricket, football (soccer), netball, rugby league and rugby union. Each partnership involves collaboration to assist regional and national federations in the sports. For example, a cricket partnership has been created between the Australian Government (AusAID and ASC), Cricket Australia and the International Cricket Council East Asia-Pacific program.

Currently, the PSP includes five sports, with more than 15 partner organisations across nine pacific countries.

Capacity, participation and development

An underpinning of the PSP program is to assist capacity building of partners, with a particular focus on national sporting federations. The program utilises the strengths of its partners at a national, regional and international level to design programs for enhanced governance and management of sport in the Pacific. This work covers a variety of approaches that benefit and develop better structures for participants, administrators, coaches and officials.

Another key component of the PSP program is to provide support for sustained increases in sport-related participation. For example, the football partnership commenced activity in 2010 and has seen the support and delivery of the Oceania Football Confederation’s Just Play junior football and social development program. Since its inception, the Just Play program has included 36 512 Pacific Island children (41 per cent female), trained 512 community members and teachers, and has demonstrated evidence of significant increases in female participation, positive social development of children in schools,
independent club development through communities and inclusion of children with disability.

Implementation

The Australian Government, through programs such as PSP, considers sports-based assistance, when delivered strategically, will make a positive contribution to Australia’s development efforts.

Australia is particularly interested in a Sport for Development approach that starts by identifying a development challenge, and then identifying and working with partners to determine how wellplanned, sport-based activities can help.

The PSP focus on capacity, participation and development is built on the belief that a well-run sporting organisation will be better equipped to deliver on quality sporting outcomes and use this foundation to further contribute to the development of Pacific island communities — all of this through a partnership approach.

Through the program, partnerships are implemented using a framework guided by AusAID and the ASC that is designed to engage organisations in medium-term collaborative Sport for Development partnerships.

The PSP program involves partnerships of up to five years through to 2014.