For the past six years ISF has been working closely with Coaches Across Continents (CAC) to develop the social impact side to our football programme.  CAC is a global leader in sport for social impact, focusing on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to address issues such as: female empowerment, including gender equity; conflict prevention, including social inclusion; health and wellness, including HIV behavior change; Child Rights; and other life skills.

CAC’s award winning Hat Trick Initiatives – Chance to Choice and ASK for Choice – have taught us a lot here at ISF. Chance to Choice focused upon the principles of moving youth from the chance and conformity of an unquestioned lifestyle through deepening insight to the recognition of potential choices. Personal life skills are required and developed to make and act upon these choices. The impact curriculum we developed with CAC over this three year project works to give youth the life skills they need to move beyond chance and reach choice.

Through ASK for Choice, CAC’s mentorship on curriculum and policy development brought gender policies to life throughout communities by creating pathways to advance women’s and girls’ participation, leadership, and rights in and through sport. Since our Football Programme’s start, the amount of females has increased nearly threefold and the number of girl teams has more than doubled. This is a big shift in football’s role for women and society and the girl’s weekly matches are widely attended by many community members demonstrating interest in and support for female participation in sport in Cambodia.

With these two initiatives under our belt and proving successful, we’ve now moved into a new phase. With CAC defining us as a “distinguished partner”, our own coaches have started running coaching education courses within the community, utilising a combination of CAC’s curriculum with ISF-developed games. This month, CAC Chief Executive Strategist Brian Suskiewicz, was with us to watch how our coaches delivered our Education Outside The Classroom training to over 100 local coaches and to offer advice and support where needed. Going forward, CAC will be focused on providing ISF with Process Consultancy Strategic Resources to assist us with organisational development and individual professional development in order to best impact our community.

To be able to deliver coach training to our local community on our own demonstrates the sustainability of CAC’s initiatives and we look forward to combining the expertise of both our organisations to push for progress in the areas where we work.

While our week-long training session may have just ended, we look forward to catching up with CAC again soon at the Beyond Sport Global Awards Ceremony in New York next month where both of us have been shortlisted for different awards!