So Can You: Sports As a Solution to Poverty

The director of an Up2Us program once told me the story of her childhood.  She grew up in a housing project where her mother had her when she was a teenager, and her grandmother had her mother when she was a teenager.  She was told never to expect to leave the housing project or the cycle of poverty that she was born into because it “just didn’t happen.”  But throughout her childhood, she ran track and played sports—and her coach had different dreams for her.  Her coach told her to imagine college, to imagine success, and to imagine a life beyond the projects.  With her coach’s ongoing support, she set goals for herself as an athlete and a student. She used the skills she learned from being part of the team to become successful in college, in her career and in life…

Can sports end poverty?  Yes they can.  And I think the model for doing so goes something like this:  we train coaches to inspire young people in areas of extreme urban and rural poverty.  These coaches coach after school, but they also meet with children during the school day to “check in on them” and help them set weekly goals for themselves.  These goals include everything from life skills, educational goals, employment skills, to simply believing in themselves.  The coaches also create expectations for the teams so that the kids can learn from each other on and off the field.  This includes teammates holding each other accountable for being on time, working together, resolving conflict, focusing on common goals, encouraging each other’s success, overcoming failure, and continuously setting higher expectations.  Sounds awfully like employees at Microsoft or Apple.

Through this model, sports can provide children the skills they can use in future careers in businesses, nonprofits and government agencies.  I get to see sports do this everyday.  Not just through the more than 500 Up2Us member organizations that conduct sports-based youth development programming in every state in this country, but through the coaches in the Up2Us Coach Across America program.  Coach Across America is an AmeriCorps program that challenges adults to spend a year in service inspiring low-income youth through sports.  AmeriCorps is a federal program that was started to end poverty in this nation.  Coach Across America is the sports solution that accomplishes this goal.

…and as for that program director who grew up in the housing project: twenty years later, she’s right back where she started from.  But this time she’s not there as a resident but as a coach.  She leaves her day job every afternoon just to be there for her team of girls.  Her message to each of them is a powerful one:

“I did it and so can you.”

Paul Caccamo, Executive Director

It’s a Slam Dunc’an

Okay, the title might be hokey, but this is perhaps the most simple lesson plan for the U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan:  if we are going to address dropout rates in schools, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, and education reform in general, we need to address the role that sports play in motivating children to succeed academically. 

No doubt Secretary Duncan has a challenging job in trying to reform public schools where the dropout rate is above 50% in many urban communities and hovers around 30% nationwide. Yet, the Secretary, himself, knows the power of sports. He played basketball, coached basketball, and was an all-American in basketball at Harvard.  In fact, he credits basketball for providing him his team-oriented and highly disciplined work ethic.  So, Secretary, why not make basketball part of your own lesson plan for education reform?

We know that students who play sports are more likely to have better grades, higher educational aspirations and advanced educational achievement beyond high school.  We also know that they are absent from school half as much as non-athletes, they get in less trouble, and they pay more attention in class.   One study has shown that student athletes are eight-times more likely to graduate than non-athletes.   Yet, despite this, public school districts have cut $3.5 billion from their school athletic budgets. We are not only losing athletes through these cuts, we’re losing the students themselves.

I propose we launch Sports Empowerment Zones.  The Zones would target schools that are failing the most.  Instead of trying the same-old formulas for educational reform, what we will do is gather sports-based youth development programs to rally around these zones. We will challenge every student to sign up for at least two teams per year, whether it be baseball, basketball, swimming, track, lacrosse or biking. We will engage parents not to come out to hear if their kid “is failing or not” but to come out and cheer for their kid at a game or a competition or a race. We will engage the local police to ensure that the school grounds are safe throughout the extended day.  We will train the coaches to talk to their players about academic goal setting, health, wellness, and gang prevention.

And most importantly, we will use the joy of sports to attract kids to attend school more often and to set aspirations for themselves that use the values they learn as athletes on and off the field.  Sports Empowerment Zones will do more to turn around the dropout rate than any other education reform currently available.  They will also be cost-effective for us getting real results in our failing schools.

So next time you pass by a failing school, just imagine what it might look like to see a sign “You are Entering A Sports Empowerment Zone” and then see that school surrounded by kids with their coaches.  All of us, from sports program leaders to school administrators to parents, must advocate for sports in our community if we are to achieve these results.  Secretary Duncan certainly gets the value of sports in his life.  Let’s remind him and our local school administrators the value it can have on the lives of so many other students as well.

Paul Caccamo, Executive Director

Dear Mayors of Detroit, Las Vegas, Memphis, Anchorage, Baltimore and St. Louis…

Unfortunately, your cities have some of the highest violence rates in the nation. But I have a solution for you, and it’s very cost cost-effective.   It’s a soccer ball… or tennis ball…or basketball…or hockey puck…

Numerous studies have shown that kids who play sports are much less likely to engage in gangs and violent behavior.  One study found that urban communities with lots of youth activities experienced 18-times less crime than communities with fewer activities.  This is a message that we need to pay attention to. In the past decade, the number of young people joining gangs in United States has increased. The most recent national survey shows that 775,000 children in America report being gang members.

Why does a child join a gang? Because they get from it a sense of belonging, teamwork, leadership and discipline—the very same qualities that they can get from being on the basketball or track team. The problem is the basketball team, the track team, the baseball team, the ”sports teams” in their communities have all disappeared.  Budget cuts have devastated youth sports, particularly in urban communities.

Mayors, if you want to fight gangs and make our cities safer places to live in, why not call on the youth sports community to be your greatest allies? Up2Us has run youth sports conferences in more than a dozen cities, and it’s amazing to learn how many obstacles urban youth sports programs must go through in order to keep their programs functioning on a daily basis. Yet, without any political support or citywide coordination, they strive to do so because they know they are critical lifelines to the kids they serve.  These youth sports leaders are community leaders, and their programs are community assets.  Ask for their help to develop a comprehensive strategy to reach more kids; to open more fields, courts, and facilities; to provide more coaches trained in conflict resolution; and to give kids more alternatives to gangs.

When I was in Chicago I met a 12-year-old boy who told me that most of his siblings were already in jail. He also told me that the previous year—at age 11—he was recruited by the neighborhood gang.  He learned to carry a gun.

“Are you still in the gang?” I asked.

He looked at me funny and said “no”.

“Why?” I said.

He tied his cleats, jumped up, and said, “because now I have soccer practice.”

Mayors, this one 12 year-old child, and former gang member, may have just given you your entire crime prevention strategy.

Paul Caccamo, Executive Director

Doctors Should Prescribe Youth Sports

I’m serious.  There is enough evidence to demonstrate that youth sports programs promote physical and mental health that medical providers could save the healthcare system billions by simply prescribing “3 hours of tennis (or lacrosse or swimming or soccer) per week”.   And for parents, this prescription is safe and comes without harmful side effects.

Think about it.  We now know that kids who play sports are eight times more likely to be active as adults.  They are more likely to have healthier self-images and less likely to experience emotional distress.   On the contrary, kids who do not play sports are 60% more likely to be overweight and are more likely to start drinking and using drugs. In the long term, regular participation in sports prevents diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.  It also relieves mental distress and promotes confidence and self-esteem.  What pill does all of that?

But there’s one key to ensuring this prescription’s effectiveness.  The patient should ask their doctor to be prescribed “sports-based youth development”–not just any sports.  Sports based youth development programs prioritize inclusion, fun, safety and health.  And their coaches have received basic training on child development.  They know how to congratulate their athletes not just for scoring goals but for striving to achieve goals on and off the field.  They create atmospheres that are safe for all players to try new things and for any one player to make mistakes.

Where can a patient find these programs?  Up2Us is a coalition of more than 500 of them serving children in every state in the country.   By prioritizing youth development over developing elite athletes, Up2Us organizations are redefining sports as a solution to this nation’s healthcare crisis.  After all, promoting health and wellness was what youth sports were originally about one hundred years ago when sports were first instituted as a free part of our public education system.  Look where we are now that 43 states allow these same schools to charge their kids to play sports: we have the first generation of youth with a lower life expectancy than their parents.

Just two weeks ago, I met with a sports-based youth development program in Los Angeles that targets low-income youth who are otherwise shut out of elite sports leagues.  The week I was there was special for one particular coach at the program.  Thanks to his work, one of his athletes, a young girl, had just learned that she no longer needed eight separate pills to control her type 2 diabetes.  In fact, her doctor told this girl and her parents that they could manage the disease without any medication at all.

The savings to the healthcare system for this child alone is enough to fund ten sports programs in their entirety.  I say it’s time we multiply her story by the other 20 million children who are threatened by diabetes in their lifetimes.

There’s one way to do so.  Let’s get doctors to prescribe youth sports.

– Paul Caccamo, Executive Director

We Need a National Jobs Program for Youth Sports in America

By now, most of us are well aware of the epidemic of childhood obesity in this nation, and we have seen many moves on the part of the food industry and the schools to address it. However, that’s only half of the equation for solving this problem; the other half is how do we inspire kids throughout our country to be more active.

The urgency of this effort cannot be understated. If we continue to live as inactively as we do now, the cost of treating diseases from conditions related to childhood obesity such as diabetes will potentially collapse our U.S. healthcare system. Already 20% of healthcare bills stem from preventable diseases like diabetes that afflict only 8% of the population. At current rates, more than 50% of Americans will be diabetic or pre-diabetic by 2020; this will cost U.S. healthcare $3.5 trillion in the next decade alone. Sustainable?

We know that kids who play sports are eight times more likely to be active throughout their lifetimes. We also know that youth who play sports develop healthier attitudes about what they choose to eat. Yet, at a time like this, fewer kids are playing sports in America than ever before, especially in communities where childhood obesity rates are the highest. This is because their sports programs have been cut and eliminated. Their schools have wiped out entire teams and leagues, especially those that serve girls and middle school students.

We can change this now. We should create a national jobs program that challenges adults to be coaches, especially in this nation’s most disadvantaged communities. Not just any coaches but trained coaches. Trained coaches are those who can address health, nutrition and other aspects of youth development so that children participating in their programs can get the skills they need to be successful and healthy adults.

There’s something else that’s equally special about creating a national job program for youth sports. It will create jobs for those that need them the most. Right now the highest unemployment bracket in this country is young adults ages 18 to 24 years old. For minorities, the unemployment rate for this age group almost doubles. Yet, it is this very  same group who may hold the key to solving the biggest threat facing our youth this century. If given the opportunity to be coaches, this group can use their passion for sports to change the national health trajectory. They can also get job skills training that can lead to career paths in areas such as health education, youth and recreational services, teaching and nonprofit management.

Up2Us is already proving the cost effectiveness of this model through our Coach Across America program. Coach Across America has placed 280 coaches in 110 low-income communities this past year. Many of these coaches come from minority communities with high unemployment rates. Coach Across America gives them their first job and trains them with skills that lead to long-term employment. In turn, they use their familiarity with their communities to get more than 35,000 youth engaged in regular physical activity, many for the first time. This program is currently an AmeriCorps program and provides minimal stipends to these young adults. Yet, guess how many applied for these low-paying 280 positions? 4500.

The passion is out there and the need is out there. We need corporations to join with the government in growing this program and translating this model into a national jobs program.

We need a national job program for youth sports.

It’s a win-win situation.

It solves our nation’s childhood epidemic and it puts young adults to work.

-Paul Caccamo, Executive Director, Up2Us

Saving Youth Sports Programs in America

Save sports in America.

Join Up2Us.

Become part of our national community.

I’m writing this on Super Bowl Sunday when most of America will be entertained by sports. While we experience football as a source of joy and diversion from our everyday lives, we need to remember that sports are also a critical lifeline for kids throughout this nation. Many kids rely on their coach to teach them skills that carry them from the field to their education, to their workplace, and onward to their success throughout their lifetimes. Many adults now in law offices, hospitals, government agencies, schools—in every career—attribute their success to values they’ve learned playing sports. Yet, at a time like this, sports programs are literally being wiped away in many communities because of budget cuts, pay-to-play, and lack of funding for anything other than reading writing and arithmetic. This must change.  Because this places the spirit of our American character at risk.

America is great because we have always encouraged the development of all sides of human character from the creative to the intellectual to the athletic. As a nation, we need to stay that way.  That’s why, on this Super Bowl Sunday, I am launching the inaugural blog for Up2Us to ask you to join our movement.

Up2Us is leading the national effort to be sure that every child in this country has access to a sports program that teaches them skills that will help them be a success in life. If you are a sports program that emphasizes youth development, join Up2Us. If you are an individual who cares about athletics, support Up2Us or any of our more than 500 members organizations across the country.

The future of sports is being sure that every child this nation has a chance to play. At the same time the future of solving this nation’s childhood obesity crisis, its dropout rates, and its gang problems is being sure that every child has a team to belong to.  Please check back on this blog and learn how Up2Us is making a difference.

And thank you for caring about youth sports across this nation.

– Paul Caccamo, Executive Director