• Ideology – patriarchal worldviews
• Leadership – decision-making,
• Engagement – support – volunteerism and skill development
• Employability for youth
• Access to resources and participation
• Values and an ethic of care & life skills
• Partnerships – an enabling environment

• Violence and ideological/cultural underpinnings
• Types of violence – in sport and in broader community
• Affecting women and girls, affecting households and men
• It is a societal issue
• Role of sport – in sport. Transferred from sport – a
  • advocacy/awareness with athletes as ambassadors and role models,
  • human rights education and a code of conduct for athletes, coaches, significant others (e.g. sport parent)
  • structural response/commission and reporting/a systems’ response
  • partnerships – an enabling environment

Phase one – situation analysis

Situation analysis to see what is in place and the current structures, projects and programmes across the sector – Competitive sport and their outreach programmes & NGOs. The University partnership is about research and possible outreach programmes for resource sharing.

Phase two – in country research

Choose two in-country sport-NGO partnership projects for ‘gender empowerment’ and/or ‘addressing gender-based violence’:

• Develop and share/train in the relevant research methodology, writing of research proposal and obtaining ethical clearance – in region and for different universities within the country.

Phase three – conduct research at national level and write regional report

• Determine contextual realities of participants in the programme/project – at the individual, household, school/club or organisation and community level.
• Determine policies and policy alignment – at the organisational level
• Investigate existing structures, programmes and initiatives – review of methodology for programme design and delivery to address agreed-upon outcomes related to gender empowerment and gender-based violence before, during and after the COVID 19 pandemic effects.
• Develop indicators for alignment with SDG-targets, organisational outcomes and target group benefits.
• Conduct an assessment – Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) with feedback to policy development, structural alignment, programme design and implementation (good practices and challenges) and strategic feedback.

Phase four – packaging of good practices, lessons learnt and strategic planning

• Report writing of findings – inter-case comparisons and determine success indicators, feasible outcomes for the sport-sector and broader society (at the community level)
• Find platforms for sharing and dissemination.

Phase five – response to research as an agenda for action

• Plan for follow-up actions by different types of stakeholders (strategic planning and partnerships)
• Conduct follow-up research (MEL) to ensure optimal delivery and programme/project effects.
• Produce a report for dissemination and sharing.
• Taking selected initiatives to scale across the southern African region.

• AUSCRegion5 to:
• The University of Johannesburg to:
• The Commonwealth Games Federation’s African Representative to:
• The SSCN Africa to:

1. Produce insights for different stakeholders on the root causes of the lack of power for girls and women in the sport sector and for leadership roles in sport-related structures in a community and society.
2. Establish the potential contribution of different initiatives and mechanisms that can meaningfully contribute to female empowerment in and through sport within the contextual realities of different countries.
3. Determine the relevant policy, structural and partnership dynamics as well as good practices in terms of delivery models, programme designs and methodology that contributed to the most significant change (MSC) within a particular context.
4. Advocate for gender empowerment and combating of gender-based violence as a societal issue and elicit the support of different stakeholders and populations (including men) to bring about social change.
5. Develop and package theories of change to guide future research and practices aligned to SMART indicators.
6. Build in-country academic capacity to continue to engage with research in this sector and collaborate around mutually beneficial projects for national sport federations, the university and the NGO sector.
7. To enrich current discoursed and promote informative debates around ‘gender empowerment’ and ‘addressing gender-based violence’ in and through sport.