Rethinking Sport's Role in Sustainable Development within the Indo-Pacific

At the edge of access, sport isn’t just a program—it’s a structure that holds communities together.

In the context of international development, resilience often refers to a community’s ability to adapt and continue functioning in the face of disruption. It’s a useful concept - but also one that can become abstract, detached from the everyday conditions in which resilience is actually formed.

One of those conditions is sport.

Australia’s Sports Diplomacy Strategy 2032+ identifies “regional resilience through development programs” as a national objective. That recognition is timely – and it aligns with a growing understanding of where and how resilience is formed. Resilience is typically viewed through the lens of emergency preparedness or crisis management, but our work at Kicks for Kids builds resilience in more embedded, routine ways. We operate in communities where access to sport is constrained by structural barriers, whether financial, social or otherwise. And in these communities, what we see emerging from simple interventions – like providing a pair of boots, or a soccer ball – is more than just activity. It’s participation that begins to anchor social connection, confidence, and routine.

Leading development thinkers, including Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, argue that real development goes beyond material progress or the accumulation of resources — it requires the expansion of people’s capabilities. Their real freedoms to do, to be, and to belong. Sport, when made meaningfully accessible, supports this kind of development. Resilience is then not only about responding to crises, but also about the presence of everyday structures – however informal – that enable continuity and connection. When kids have a team to show up to, a coach that expects them, and equipment they can rely on, that consistency matters - it builds a sort of social coherence that holds well beyond the bounds of sport itself.

There’s also a broader, more relational dimension to consider. Sport fosters what academics have long called ‘social capital’—the networks of trust, cooperation, and mutual support that prop communities and nations up in times of distress. These bonds might not be easily quantified through official metrics, but they are central to the ways resilience plays out in practice. At a local level, community-driven sport builds the people-to-people connections that help individuals feel supported and seen - especially in contexts where other forms of infrastructure may be limited. And at a broader scale, offering this kind of support across borders can play a quiet but vital role in strengthening Australia's ties with its closest Indo-Pacific neighbours - through practical, relational diplomacy rooted in everyday experience.

While much of this work remains informal, it increasingly intersects with measurable outcomes. In the Pacific, for example, the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade backed Just Play sports for development program reported that after participating, the proportion of children who felt safe following a natural disaster more than doubled – from 24% to 59%. But this kind of data only reinforces what practitioners already know: regular, inclusive sport contributes to both the social and psychological foundations of resilience, even in conventionally defined development terms. This aligns with a growing body of resilience literature which emphasises that adaptive capacity is often rooted in the strength of everyday systems, not just institutional responses.

We know Australia’s Sports Diplomacy Strategy 2032+ identifies “regional resilience through development programs” as a national objective – and if development aims to build more capable, more connected communities - then we should pay closer attention to where that process actually begins. High-profile events and elite partnerships capture attention, and large-scale investments do matter. But the most durable forms of resilience are likely to be shaped in smaller, slower ways—through grassroots programs, relationships, and practices that embed inclusion at the level of the everyday.

At Kicks for Kids, our work contributes directly to this - by removing barriers to participation, by creating opportunities for children to engage through sport, and by building structures of connection and routine that communities can rely on. These aren’t always large-scale interventions, but they are consistent, relational, and deeply grounded. Sport’s strategic contribution to regional resilience lies not in momentary visibility, but in the enduring social infrastructure it helps sustain—across communities, and across borders.