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Sustainable development starts with active, healthy and physically engaged citizens. The importance of good health and the inadequacies of existing health infrastructures have been brought into sharp focus during the COVID pandemic. Addressing health gaps will be critical to recovery efforts. Schools are a natural entry-point to trigger transformative behavioural shifts related to healthy lifestyles.

As such, investment in an innovative and integrated delivery of education, exercise and good nutrition should be considered as a key component of recovery efforts.

It is well known that individual engagement in targeted, values-based interventions in sport, physical education and physical activity increases physical and mental health. Engagement in active, values-infused learning environments, like quality physical education classes, also boosts intellectual, individual and emotional capital.

This translates to an acceleration of socio-emotional skills acquisition that grow the confidence of students and, in turn, build the psycho-social resilience necessary to respond creatively and effectively to future crises whether related to health, employment or inclusion.

This toolkit is designed to support young people advocate for and effectively contribute to the development of quality physical education (QPE) policy. Youth organizations and other civil society actors who work in youth engagement and/or education, physical activity and sport and who are not familiar with policy advocacy may also find the content useful.

This toolkit offers general principles for successful policy advocacy that can be adapted based on what best suits your national context and specific policy development processes. You will find sections presenting the value of youth engagement in policy development, tried and tested techniques to inspire impact-oriented advocacy strategies and practical checklists to navigate physical education (PE) policy development processes.

The content of the toolkit is particularly relevant for sport and QPE policy advocacy as it contains specific data on the benefits of investing, subject-specific resources and concrete examples from the QPE policy revision project. The ideas and strategies outlined can also be used to support youth engagement in the development of overlapping policy frameworks e.g. health, education, gender equality.

Toolkit users are encouraged to take an inter-sectoral and intersectional approach to PE policy advocacy. Coalition-building across sport, education and health sectors will help pool limited capacities and ensure a coherent national vision in terms of policy design, commitments and budgeting. Inter-sectoral coherence will also maximize impact at the local and national levels.

The toolkit draws directly on the findings of UNESCO’s Quality Physical Education Policy Project. You can learn more about the project on the dedicated webpage.

Youth were key stakeholders in the national policy revision exercises carried out within the framework of the QPE Policy Project. The project evaluation highlighted the key contributions of inter-sectoral partnerships and participatory policy development processes in the elaboration of robust, inclusive and impact-oriented policy documents.

The postponed 2020 Finals of the Billie Jean King Cup will see women share the largest annual fund in women’s team sports equalling the amount awarded in the men’s competition.

However, whilst the pay-gap in elite tennis is closed in terms of prize money and tennis performs well in terms of global participation with 47% female participants, significant off court challenges remain: 20% of coaches and 22% of certified officials are women, and female representation on ITF’s board sits at only 18%.

A 2020 ITF leadership survey highlighted the importance of female role models as one of the most important factors influencing women as they develop their careers. With the goal of increasing the number of women on and off the court, including those in decision making and leadership roles, ITF established the Gender Equality in Tennis Committee (originally called the Women in Sport Committee) in 2017 chaired by USTA president and ITF Vice President Katrina Adams. The following year, with the support of the Foundation for Global Sports Development (GSD), the Advantage All programme was launched including enhanced funding for workshops, education and professional development for up and coming female leaders, including coaches and officials.

BENEFITS
• Having a gender equality strategy establishes clear objectives and targets for an organisation and its stakeholders to advance gender equality.
• The development of female leadership facilitates sustainable change in closing the gender gap and achieving equal representation.
• Ensuring equal opportunity in sport maximises commercial opportunities.

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