About IDS

Commonwealth Games Canada (CGC) has a dual mandate that covers both development through sport and the development of sport. The two work hand-in-hand. In many ways, the development of sport in a given country or context is integral to making development through sport programs work. One provides the essential framework for the other.

Carla Thachuk,
Director of International Programs,
Commonwealth Games Canada

To encourage the development of sport, CGC works with Commonwealth Games Associations (CGAs) in developing countries to enhance sport skills and sport structures to assist our partners in creating sustainable sport programs for all. One of CGC’s most important initiatives in this area is the Capacity Support Program, where young Canadians with sport-administration backgrounds are placed with CGAs and National Olympic Committees overseas to assist them with everything from communications to Games preparation.

Development through sport, on the other hand, means using sport as a tool to provide opportunities for life-skill development and HIV/AIDS education to children and youth who we would otherwise be unable to reach. For these young people, schooling may not be a possibility. They may be struggling with teen pregnancies, forced marriages, drugs or gangs. But through sport, our partners on the ground such as Kicking AIDS Out and the Trinidad & Tobago Alliance for Sport and Physical Education (TTASPE) are able to introduce positive experiences, and at the same time teach life lessons that go hand in hand with sport: leadership, team building, conflict resolution and respecting rules and others.

When you’re in a community and you bring out a Frisbee or a soccer ball, kids are immediately interested, whatever their age, gender, ethnicity or religion. And when they’re there you have an unbiased audience, ready to listen, ready to learn.

HIV/AIDS education and the inclusion of girls and people living with disabilities are integral to all of CGC’s partner programs, but we don’t believe in a cookie-cutter approach. Rather, CGC works with its partners to identify needs in their areas and then supports them in the delivery of programs that make sense in their particular cultural context. Sport, of course, is at the centre of it all.