Research has been showing the importance of sport in society, stressing its role in promoting citizenship (ActiveVoice, 2008), volunteering, and social values (Health Promotion & Improvement Department of the HSE, 2012; Sport and Citizenship, 2018). In this vein, the integration of children and young people in sports contexts has been increasing, not only due to its potential of enhancing health and well-being, but also of fostering personal and social development connected to civic participation.  Concretely, sports practice has been widely associated with the development of psychosocial and educational competences that often translate into civic behaviors attitudes: cooperation, leadership, critical awareness, responsibility, decision-making (Hellison & Martinek, 2009; Torralba, 2017). Existing studies report changes at (i) the individual level (eg, collaborative work and interpersonal skills); (ii) the pedagogy practices (teaching/training  programs designed to instigate e.g., self-efficacy, leadership, and teamwork); and (iii) the social dimensions (interventions with groups at risk of socio-educational exclusion, related to e.g., absenteeism, school dropout, and addictive behaviors) (Lerner et al., 2006). Despite the range of evidence relating sports with psychological, social and educational competences, research remains rather opaque concerning the collective and political effects of youth involvement in sports. In other words, a community-level perspective and a link between individual competences and democratic citizenship practices are lacking. These are shortcomings that this presentation aims at address. Even though the development of programs based on sport reinforce the idea that integration in sports teams and contexts promotes individual and collective empowerment (García-Arjona, 2017; Lerner et al., 2006), these benefits have not been yet recognized, neither in research, not in public policies (Fernández Marrón, 2017; Hellison & Martinek, 2009). Therefore, drawing on studies  emphasizing the importance of educational and community synergies in fostering political involvement and democratic citizenship (Lawy & Biesta, 2006), it is crucial a close-up investigation exploring how the dynamics of sports contexts promote democratic and participatory experiences for each young athlete  (Schaillée et al., 2019), and how the development of these skills can be related to civic and political participation in the community, namely when referring to the sense of belonging and inclusion of all citizens (García-Arjona, 2017). This is even more relevant if we consider, on the one hand, the political pleas for promoting youth democratic engagement as remedy to avoid the expansion of populist and radicalist agendas, and, on the other hand, the adultist trends that still pervade many international projects that are neither led by youth nor anchored in true partnership between children and young athletes.

The fundamental role of youth civic and political participation for healthy democracies has been repeatedly stressed and vastly explored, reporting the emergence of unconventional forms of participation, more fluid and less institutional (Malafaia et al., 2021). Sport has been included in these new forms of participation, as evidenced by the growing number of youth development interventions based on sport and grinded on principles of inclusion and participation (Petitpas et al., 2005).

The central purpose of our study is to understand how sports can be a catalyst context of activism by contributing to the development of young athletes as citizens committed to build inclusive societies. In particular, the study seeks to: a) explore the potential of sport to promote socio-educational outcomes linked to the development of civic/political skills and democratic citizenship; b) instigate the participation of athletes in the development of actions in/with the community by increasing their sense of belonging and levels of participation; c) equip youth with activist tools to promote social and political change in their communities.

This study is inspired by youth participatory action research (YPAR) approaches. Assuming a focus on the involvement of young people in the research process, this approach aims at providing opportunities for young people to identify, research and act upon the social problems that affect their lives (Cammarota & Fine, 2008). Thirty-three young athletes, aged between 12 and 16, from a sports club and a school in the metropolitan area of Porto participated in this study. In the sports club they formed a Play4life work team of nine elements, in the school they formed four Play4life teams of six elements each. The operationalization of the “Young Athletes as Sport Activists” program was carried out in three articulated stages: 1) follow-up and capacity building workshops with youth; 2) intervention of the athletes in the community and project development; 3) data analysis, outputs’ organization, assessment, and result dissemination. At the outset of the program’s implementation, individual interviews were conducted with each participant to understand their expectations, motivations, and interests for joining the project, but also to identify the characteristics that sport and sports practice may have as a facilitator of social inclusion. The program implementation encompassed a 3-workshops design: the first workshop aimed at equipping the athletes with community intervention tools, based on "problem-based solution" approaches (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007; Silva et al., 2015) ; the second workshop focused on sharing activist tools and tactics that can be mobilized or adapted to the community intervention; and the third workshop aimed at mentoring the program and collectively build strategies to replicate it. During the intervention, the teams had an hour a week to develop and implement their community project. They started by identifying a community problem to work on, collected data on the same problem, analyzed the data, and, through a sports-based approach, intervened in the community. The monitoring of the process was carried out through participant observation and field notes, individual interviews with young people at the beginning and end of the project, and one focus group in the middle of the project. The project developed, implemented, and analyzed by the young athletes was presented in a multiplier event designed to disseminate the results and products of the research to the community.

The expected results are diverse and are fed by different methodological inputs: the interviews with the young participants reveal their perceptions about personal and social value of sports, in terms of 1) enhancing health and well-being; 2) the development of psychosocial and educational competences, such as: cooperation, leadership, self-efficacy, teamwork, critical awareness, etc.; the workshops’ development led to preliminary identifications of bullying, sedentary lifestyle, gender equality and alimentation as significant problems experienced by young people in their communities (in-and-out of school); the observation fieldnotes of the projects’ development by young people show the permanent strategies of negotiating among each other regarding how would be the most appropriate ways to address the community problems raised, but also the power dynamics between supportive adults and the young participants; focus groups showed the sensibility gains for community intervention, a result of the follow-up done throughout the project, mainly through the capacity building workshops. This environment clearly enhances the personal, social, and civic development of each athlete, helping them to be better boys and girls, friends and citizens, attentive and engaged in their community. Their intentional engagement in sports activities as pathways to improve their communities are expected to impact youths’ individual and collective sense of efficacy as active agents of social change and will learn how to organize themselves to learn how to organize themselves and how to develop a sports-based project that can be implemented in their communities. Knowing also themselves a new dimension as agents of change and activists for sports. The general results highlight the socio-educational significance of sports contexts as contexts for promoting the citizenship of young athletes, as well as to determine how the dynamics of sports contexts promote democratic and participatory experiences in young athletes.

ActiveVoice. (2008). ActiveVoice project. Retrieved 16 January 2023 from https://www.activevoice.eu/about/ Cammarota, J., & Fine, M. (2008). Youth participatory action research: A pedagogy for transformational resistance. In Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion (pp. 1-11). Routledge. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203932100 Fernández Marrón, I. (2017). Las políticas de la Unión Europea en el ámbito del deporte. Educación social: revista de intervención socioeducativa, 65, 57-74. García-Arjona, N. (2017). researchIng local sports InItIatIves for young mIgrants from a polItIcal perspectIve: methodologIcal and practIcal challenges el estuDio De iniciativas Deportivas locales para jóvenes Migrantes DesDe una perspectiva política: retos MetoDológicos y prácticos. Migraciones. Health Promotion & Improvement Department of the HSE. (2012). Be Active ASAP Retrieved 16 January 2023 from http://www.beactiveasap.ie/the-programme Hellison, D., & Martinek, T. (2009). Youth leadership in sport and physical education. Springer. Hmelo-Silver, C. E., Duncan, R. G., & Chinn, C. A. (2007). Scaffolding and achievement in problem-based and inquiry learning: A response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational psychologist, 42(2), 99-107. Lawy, R., & Biesta, G. (2006). Citizenship-as-practice: The educational implications of an inclusive and relational understanding of citizenship. British journal of educational studies, 54(1), 34-50. Lerner, R. M., Alberts, A. E., Jelicic, H., & Smith, L. M. (2006). Young people are resources to be developed: Promoting positive youth development through adult-youth relations and community assets. In E. G. R. J. E. Clary (Ed.), Mobilizing adults for positive youth development - strategies for closing the gap between beliefs and behaviors. Springer. Malafaia, C., Ferreira, P. D., & Menezes, I. (2021). Democratic Citizenship-in-the-Making: Dis/Engagement Profiles of Portuguese Youth. Frontiers in Political Science, 127. Petitpas, A. J., Cornelius, A. E., Van Raalte, J. L., & Jones, T. (2005). A framework for planning youth sport programs that foster psychosocial development. Sport psychologist, 19(1). Schaillée, H., Haudenhuyse, R., & Bradt, L. (2019). Community sport and social inclusion: international perspectives. Sport in Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2019.1565380 Silva, M. J., Nascimento, S. M., & Teixeira-Machado, L. (2015). Problem-based learning as a method for teaching basketball skills to young athletes. Journal of Physical Education and Sport, 15(1), 85-92. Sport and Citizenship. (2018). PACTE Project : Promoting Active Cities Throughout Europe. PACTE Project. Retrieved 16 January 2023 from https://www.sportetcitoyennete.com/en/europe/pacte-project Torralba, F. (2017). El deporte, agente configurador del ethos. Educación social: revista de intervención socioeducativa, 65, 13-29.