Getting more youth involved in sports goal of program

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The provincial and federal governments are pooling their resources, jointly funding a project aimed at getting Saskatchewan's youth more active.

The goal of the new Building Future Champions program is to provide the province's youth with more opportunities to get involved in sports, with a special emphasis on increasing participation rates among Aboriginal youth.

The program targets kindergarten, elementary and high school students, as well as Aboriginal sports leaders through its four components. The first of those components is the Canada Games Day program, which encourages elementary school- aged children to learn and take part in the sports that will be part of the Canada Summer Games when Regina hosts them in August 2005.

The second component is Saskatchewan Sport Match, aimed at youth in grades 7 to 12, and designed to help them find the sport that best matches their particular skills and strengths.

Component three, Aboriginal Excellence, is aimed at Aboriginal athletes, coaches, officials and volunteers, and will help raise their levels of performance. And component four, Aboriginal Games Management Mentoring, is a partnership between the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) and the 2005 Canada Summer Games Host Committee, and is designed to increase Aboriginal involvement in all aspects of the upcoming games.

A total of $1.2 million has been committed to the Building Future Champions program, with $540,000 coming from the federal government, and $670,00 from the province over three years.

"The program comes from the need to provide more sport and physical activities for children and youth with an emphasis on Aboriginal children and youth," explained Art Lord, a sport and recreation consultant with Saskatchewan Culture, Youth and Recreation. "And there's evidence that Aboriginal people aren't accessing the programs that are offered as readily as others at this time. So there's a need to do more programming with an emphasis on that particular target group. Canada Sport, through the Secretary of State for Sport and Physical Activity, indicated that there's monies available to advance the Canadian Sport Policy within all provinces and territories. So they offered what we call bilateral assistance to help us within our province develop sport opportunities. So that's kind of what gave us the impetus to go ahead and develop a special initiative which we've called Building Future Champions."

The Canadian Sport Policy was created in 2002 and endorsed by all federal, provincial and territorial governments. The goal of the policy is to increase participation by all Canadians by 2012, with a special emphasis on improving rates between three groups seen as under-represented-women, visible minorities, and Aboriginal people.

The goal of programs such as Creating Future Champions, Lord explained, is to help eliminate the barriers that prevent some Aboriginal youth from getting involved in sports programs.

"In terms of barriers, I guess there's maybe a lack of leadership, to some degree, within the Aboriginal community. The fact that there's not as many programs offered because there might be a bit of a lack of facilities as well. And then there's geographic and economic barriers. There's a cost to accessing programs, and sometimes the economic barriers is a major one. And in terms of northern Saskatchewan and Aboriginal people living on reserves, there's sometimes a geographic barrier. So those are just, I guess, some of the things that are facing Aboriginal people as such," Lord said.

And the need to increase activity levels among youth is certainly not something that is limited to the Aboriginal community, Lord added, pointing to a declining level of physical activity and physical fitness among all youth across the country.

"What we're finding is that children and youth in general are less active today than they were two decades ago, and that there's a need to get kids more physically active. That' not a barrier as such, but it's definitely a problem that exists. And with all the distractions we have through technologies, television and computers and video games and so on, kids find their recreational time being taken up by less active pursuits," Art Lord said.

While there are, of course, physical benefits of a more active lifestyle for children, as well as adults, getting a child involved in sports has other benefits as well, Lord explained.

"I think there's the physical health benefit, which is obvious. But emotional health can be improved through physical activity, and it's been proven in the past that kids that participate in sport and physical activity have higher self-esteem. It provides kids with a positive interaction with their peers. And it also leads to maybe more family activity and family time. So kind of the emotional health of children and youth can certainly benefit from participation. And also I think then there's an improved learning capacity. The fact that there might be an improvement in academic performance with kids that are physically active," he said.

"I guess the overall benefit is that it's a positive experience. It gets kids doing positive things and keeps them from the negative activities that they could delve into. I think that's another benefit too."

Paul DeVillers, Secretary of State for Physical Activity and Sport, whose department is providing the federal portion of the Building Future Champions program, sees another valuable benefit that will come out of the initiative-creation of positive role models for Aboriginal youth.

"Tthat's part of this program, is the mentoring program. To be able to have trained Aboriginal coaches and officials to work with Aboriginal youth, I think, is very important. So that's another strong component that one gets from participation in sport, is you develop those role models.

"The Aboriginal athletes who perform well are going to be the role models, but also when we mentor the coaches and te officials, etc., then they're there to mentor in turn the Aboriginal youth," he said.

"I think in the Aboriginal community it's very important for Aboriginal youth to see Aboriginal athletes and coaches and officials. Then it's very evident that they too can reach those levels."

One of the goals of the Building Future Champions program is to help Aboriginal athletes, officials and coaches be prepared to take part in the 2004 Canada Summer Games. While the number of Aboriginal participants in mainstream provincial sports is increasing, the numbers still aren't where they could be, Lord explained.

"If you were to take a percentage of Aboriginal participants in the Saskatchewan games program, and those on teams representing Saskatchewan going to Canada games, both summer and winter, it wouldn't correspond with the population proportion. So yes, there is a lack of participation from the Aboriginal community. Although in our provincial games program, the Saskatchewan winter and summer games, we have created the opportunity for northern Saskatchewan to be now considered a zone. And we are starting to get more Aboriginal participants now into those games, simply because of the structural change. And still I don't think it's maybe proportionate, but is better than what it has been. And that's been in place for the 2000 summer games held in Yorkton, and the 2002 winter games held in Humbolt. So we're starting to make some inroads there, but we can certainly go further," he said.

"With the Canada Games program, the intent here is again to I.D. kids for developing in various sports, and to provide incentives for the Aboriginal children that are interested in pursuing higher level sport development to actually do that. And then be invited to camps to try out for Team Saskatchewan, for various sports within Team Saskatchewan. So the intent then is to develop the athletes. And also parallel with that, the development of coaches so that there's a support then to whatever deelopment that we achieve. And that it's not just a one-time thing, that there's some lasting benefit then of this program by having leaders such as coaches in place. And then also components within the Building Future Champions program allows for volunteer development, personnel development, and basically a support system then for the athletes within the Aboriginal sport system."

The Aboriginal Games Management Mentoring component will also contribute by providing a means for Aboriginal coaches to learn from more experienced coaches who have taken their teams to provincial-level competitions, Lord said.

"The intent of the mentoring program is really to associate Aboriginal coaches with trained coaches of a fairly high standing who represent Saskatchewan in terms of games teams. And to allow them to learn from others and then have the confidence and the training to go back and share that knowledge with their sport system and athletes."

The Aboriginal coaches participating in the mentoring program will also be learning more about how the provincial sports system works, and how they can gain access to the resources, programs and services that the system has to offer.