Sport-for-Development

Today, Partners of the Americas commemorates World Youth Skills Day (WYSD) by recognizing the power of adequate skills training to combat youth unemployment. This year, WYSD centers on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all under Sustainable Development Goal 4. At Partners, we work toward this goal by teaching youth marketable skills and emphasizing the importance of education to transform lives around the world.

Partners of the Americas kicked off its fourth annual What Works Conference on December 4. For four days, 115 change-agents gathered from 27 Chapters and eight countries to strengthen inter-institutional partnerships and power greater connectivity across the Partners network.

During the week of October 15, the PartnersCampus Network united forces to end poverty for the International Day to Eradicate Poverty.

When a Santo Domingo soccer team visited Lebanon, Tennessee, they built on a 50-year legacy of youth programs with the Tennessee Partners and Chapters and organizations in Venezuela, Amazonas, Brazil, and most recently, the Dominican Republic.​

We are pleased to have expanded our A Ganar program to Colombia this year, in partnership with Colombia’s National Learning Service SENA and Volunteers Colombia. A Ganar is a sport-for-development program that prepares at-risk teens and young adults to find a job or return to school.

The community of São Remo celebrates the donation of a new safe space to play sports. Built by community volunteers and ESPN employees, the new court will be the home of sustainable programs teaching young people employability skills through sports, thanks to our Vencer program along with other local partners.

For quadriplegic individuals, quad rugby is an opportunity to play a sport in which wheelchairs are the norm. Three years ago Los Criollos was formed in Uruguay and this past month they brought an international quad rugby tournament to their country for the first time, with support from Fundación A Ganar.