Learning and Knowledge Management

Sport and Disability Knowledge Exchange

The Clients

For this project inFocus collaborated with individuals from a range of organisations to bring a number of diverse voices from the sport and disability sector into the knowledge exchange. Some of the organisations that collaborated with inFocus for this knowledge exchange were: Disability Sport Northern Ireland, Power of Sport Lab, Sport and Social Society Initiative at Brown University, Inclusion4development, Indiability and the Spirit of 2012 Trust.

The Challenge

To facilitate interactive online webinars that bring together practitioners, funders and researchers working in the global field of sport for development (S4D) and disability to share their experience and insights. The aim of the knowledge exchange was to foster learning and connections around sport and disability across the sport for development sector.

The Project

Over the course of a year inFocus hosted a series of six interactive webinars on topics around sport and disability.

Each of the webinars explored a different topic related to S4D and disability through guided discussions and exercises, with a focus on exploring the commonalities and differences in S4D and disability work around the world. The information generated from the webinars was used to develop and refine a new Theory of Change (TOC) for S4D and Disability that is  publicly available as a resource in the S4D sector. Topics for each webinar was decided across the course of the year to enable participants to feedback and propose topics they would like to see covered. 

Three of the topics were:

  • –   What is an inclusive activity – we look at inclusivity through the lens of Universal Design, “a framework for the design of places, things, information, communication and policy, that can be usable by the widest range of people operating in the widest range of situations – without special or separate design.” (Institute for Human Centered Design (2015b, para. 1)
  • –    What is advocacy and how can it help advance inclusive sport – we looked at advocacy through various lenses that help build a cohesive argument for more and better policies and resources for inclusive sport in all its forms.
  • –    How to Monitor & Evaluate sport and disability activities – During the webinar, we looked at current practices for the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of sport and disability programmes (& disability programmes more generally), outlined specific challenges encountered with M&E by disability focused organisations, and explored potential solutions.

inFocus developed and made publicly available a number of learning resources created from the webinar. This included a Theory of Change (TOC) for S4D and Disability as well as  learning document highlighting different factors to be considered when designing inclusive activities.