Introduction
SCORE is widely recognised as a pioneer and world leader in Community Development through Sport. With a grassroots focus and a commitment to being community driven and owned, SCORE and it's partners employ a participative and process oriented approach, through a sustained and progressive intervention, to empower individuals and community structures. Relationships are key to the success of this approach, as is an understanding of the value that all stakeholders can contribute. Relying widely on volunteer implementors, SCORE provides it's volunteers with the training and support necessary to make a meaningful impact.
Lessons learnt
It is simple to use sport and recreation as an attractor to achieve mass participation in events used as a platform to address social and community development issues. However, unless community sport and recreation structures are strong and well organised, you can’t effectively use sport as a tool for sustainable community development.
Through participation in sport you are developing an individual (leader, young girl, disabled person etc..), but sport can also be used as a developmental tool to achieve outcomes beyond the sports field such as health and the relationships between different groups within a community (i.e. young and old / sick and healthy / rich and poor / school and broader community / those in authority and not ). SCORE programmes attempt to go a step further by encouraging good citizenship and motivating sports people to be peer leaders.
Volunteers can really make a valuable contribution, both during their volunteer term by sharing their skills and afterwards by sharing their knowledge and experiences in their home community, thus helping to break down negative stereotypes.
Volunteers will only be effective if they are well supported in their communities, receive sufficient training and if their activities are integrated into ongoing local strategies and structures. It is therefore essential to identify and foster good relationships with a network of community leaders who can support volunteers and assist to integrate their work in the community.
Community development is a process, one can't define a finite period for the achievement of the desired community development outcomes as each community follows a unique path to reach key milestones, especially when the community is setting the pace of the process.
It remains a challenge to fit community needs with donors and other results oriented stakeholders. The Programme Approach allows for a holistic, long-term, programatic approach where donor projects deliver short term outcomes within a defined development model as per individual community needs. Always involve representatives at local level in the organisations decision making process thereby fostering a sense of ownership of projects and the organisation itself.
There needs to be a continuum for individual and community development where there is always an option to progress to the next level and achieve higher aspirations.
Monitoring and Evaluation
SCORE has a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system in place to record the data required to report to donors on a project by project basis as well as record data for the strategic management of SCORE's three core programmes.
Monitoring and evaluation is currently implemented predominantly at a national level, however in 2010, SCORE plans to upgrade and centralise the organisations monitoring and evaluation system. This will still enable national offices to capture data and print reports, but will store all data in one central online database, facilitating an improved management of the organisations knowledge resources and an enhanced ability to strategically manage the organisations M&E capacity.
Some medium-term plans...
SCORE aims to generate income to cover overheads in it's international and national offices.
SCORE aims to be an African thought leader in the area of community development through sport and volunteer project implementation.
To implement SCORE Programmes in both the North and the South.
