To sustain the impacts and outcomes of the project implemented with funding from the AFD-“Impact 2024 International”; The International Olympics Committee (IOC) through Sports Impact supported the sustenance of the achievements and impacts made by the funding through awarding a one year grant. With this grant, we continued to use sports platforms and established 4 local Youth Conflict Resolution Committees (YCRCs) comprised of trained youth/young peace builders who are now working with the local, religious and refugee leaders in the refugee camp and host communities to continue conducting intercultural and interreligious dialogues for peace building and promotion of social harmony among refugee and non-refugee populations. They have so far engaged 1018 youth in intercultural and interfaith dialogue sessions in a period of one year.
The project has also established 4 Peers of Positive Influence (POPI) groups having members with lived experience of mental illnesses who are trained to spearhead community mental health awareness trainings among young people. They are continuing to work with local and refugee sports coaches, youth sports clubs, Village Health Teams (VHTs) and the sports teachers in different schools in the refugee and host communities to conduct in and out of school sports activities focused on improving on the physical and mental health of vulnerable adolescents and youth. They have continued to set side health clinics to act as platforms to scale mental health awareness and education and also educating the adolescents and youth about HIV prevention. The POPI groups have so far educated 1847 youth in the refugee and host communities about mental health and are working with partners from public health facilities and the Community Health Workers (CHWs)/Village Health Teams (VHTs) to conduct mental health assessment in the communities.
The project has established and supported the local youth sports clubs, trained sports teachers to scale the integration of sports in schools’ education curriculum in the refugee and non-refugee communities and has also led to the establishment of 12 Village Youth Sports Entrepreneurs Groups with members coming from different beneficiaries groups. The groups were supported to implement income generating projects where 50% of the proceeds are ploughed back into the sports activities of different groups of refugee and non-refugee adolescents and youth to continue implementing sports activities for social good and contribute towards different SDGs.
