Tools and Resources for Using Sport for Development
"Do the Good": A Ground-Breaking Curriculum Approach to Achieving Impact in Sports Programs (Especially for Youth Affected by Complex Trauma)
The vast majority of sport for development initiatives attempt to attach life skills to a specific sport. But what if you could actually teach, promote and develop life skills, real-time, during practices and matches? Edgework has created a truly ground-breaking curriculum approach that trains coaches, leagues and programs to actually embed the life skills they want their participants to learn inside the existing structure of their team and league. We have all witnessed a coach who, over the course of a season, can create real impact on his or her team. Edgework has built the platform to transform your entire league/program into a vehicle for positive youth development and behavior change. Results from a rigorous external evaluation concluded: "From the perspective of trauma-informed care, this program involves gold-standard adjunctive treatment delivered in a highly efficient fashion. The DTG curriculum has the potential to significantly impact a large number of traumatized children in a relatively easy-to-deliver manner, as all coaches are lay-persons and not therapists. The program.stands alone as one of the few programs nationwide which can demonstrate such significant impacts with this population."
Vital Coaching Behaviors
To truly take on the task of coaching youth is to recognize that you task is not just to develop the athlete, but to develop the person. This is the essence of sports-based youth development (SBYD) movement. However, most of the training for coaches that attempts to address this challenge, teaches the two development areas independently. The reality is that the master youth coaches, the ones who are able to achieve both on the field and off the field outcomes through sport, can do this in an integrated way. We have been observing and working with coaches for many years, and have uncovered a set of behaviors that these coaches use to both coach the athlete towards greater sport development and the young person towards greater human and life skill development. These "vital coaching behaviors" reveal a way to coach that lets you get achieve truly powerful youth development outcomes as part of your sport coaching approach.
The Teaching Referee: Reimaging the Skills of the "Positive Youth Development Referee"
This tool outlines a ground-breaking approach to refereeing in your sport. We have created a skill-based framework for referees that aligns them around vital positive youth development and learning outcomes for the children and youth they coach. This "reinvention" of the youth referee may shock you at first but as you uncover the rationale and internalize the skills, you will discover how a small number of vital skills can turn the referee from the "enforcer" and "enemy" into a central positive and teaching figure in your league.
The Evaluation of the Doc Wayne Athletic League
The Doc Wayne Athletic League (visit our Impact Page) is designed for female adolescents who are suffering from severe emotional dys-regulation and complex trauma. This league and the accompanying "Do The Good" curriculum is providing meaningful stabilization and important mental health outcomes for this population through sport. This evaluation is an in depth study of the league and it's outcomes.
The Power of Sports in Working with Youth Affected by Complex Trauma
There is a growing body of research revealing the central role of the brain "rewiring" in helping people recover from trauma. This presentation makes the connection between current brain science and the role that sport can play in the process of helping youth recover from trauma.
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