Remote and Online Sport and Play-based Life Skills Programme

Innovatively using sport and play as effective programmatic tools for online life skills programming during the COVID-19 pandemic

This initiative by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners supported the Department of Basic Education (DBE) of South Africa by supporting the design of innovative activities to keep learners engaged and learning with an S4D life skills curriculum. UNICEF delivered sport- and play-based dialogues sessions conducted through online media platforms and further supported by learners' engagement with online life skills content through an online Learning Management System.

The initiative aims to build the capacity of learners and engage them with the purpose of equipping them with information, knowledge and skills related to violence against children, self-esteem, social skills, communication skills, human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV & AIDS), gender equity and equality, setting and achieving goals, cyber ills, stereotypes, peer pressure, and other social skills, while also becoming digitally literate citizens. The initiative also aims to ensure that girls and boys, especially those in under-resourced communities, are provided with inclusive and equitable developmental and learning opportunities in safe and secure learning environments for effective learning, personal empowerment, active citizenship and/or employability.

Initially conceptualized as a COVID-19 response initiative where the programme was offered in a digital/blended approach to learning and participation, the curriculum and sport/play-based activities of an S4D programme were adapted and digitalized/animated for remote programming, including uploading to the Learning Passport, and made available as a self-learning and e-learning course . The online S4D sessions are offered in an interactive format where, after initial training and onboarding, learners are supported with mobile data to join remote sessions and the trained facilitators are responsible for creating safe online spaces and for encouraging exchange of knowledge, information and open dialogue stemming from animated sport/play videos played during the sessions. These sport/play videos are an animation of the activities that learners would perform in a typical in-person S4D session. Ultimately these online sessions use sport- and play-based activities as a vehicle to teach life skills in an intentional and systematic manner (i.e. a sport-based life skills programme)

To achieve this, learners enrol on the five-week programme by: (1) attending the programme orientation; (2) participating in all online sessions; and (3) completing the self-learning/e-learning curriculum on the Learning Passport. Learners are supported with mobile data to ensure their full participation and they are responsible for ensuring that they have access to a compatible device where they can download the relevant apps that they need to participate at the time they are required to. The conceptualization of the intervention involved various partners, including Media Monitoring Africa, Agape Youth Movement, and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), which contributed technical expertise and resources. This included the development of curriculum, training, advocacy and facilitation. To date, the achievements of the initiative include:

• 132 online S4D life skills sessions hosted;
• 534 learners supported to participate in online S4D life skills sessions;
• 108 Educators participated and supported learners in sessions;
• 35 facilitators supported to lead online S4D life skills sessions;

In the post-COVID era, UNICEF and partners continue to support DBE in rolling out this innovative comprehensive life skills intervention. In 2022, a S4D Life Skills Remote/ Online Programme Monitoring and Evaluation toolkit was developed to assess and measure if the participation in an online life skills intervention leads to certain intermediate impacts on young people. These include: (1) positive psycho-social behavioural changes in areas such as personal development, aspirations, commitment, interaction, communication, self-esteem, relationships, trust, sense of belonging and other social skills; and (2) other life skills information, knowledge and skills.

The initiative has been adopted by the government of South Africa (DBE) and has now become part of mainstream youth engagement and life skills programming in schools.

This initiative is replicable, and its approach and implementation methodology can be easily adapted for other remote life skills interventions. The logistics of rolling out such an intervention are not complicated as all that is required is a mobile device, mobile data/Wi-Fi and consent from parents for learners' participation. If these three elements are in place, then learners can participate wherever they are and at any time. The biggest challenge in South Africa was the high costs of mobile data, as this pushes up the cost of programming significantly. In a country or region where access to Wi-Fi and/or mobile data costs are lower, this intervention can be implemented at large scale. The intervention can also be adapted and offered in a blended approach to suit the needs of programme beneficiaries, governments, donors, UN agencies and civil society organizations (CSOs).

The migration of programmes to online platforms highlighted the importance of access to the internet and concomitantly the need for critical digital literacy skills. A lesson learned was that as the South African school system accelerated towards online learning, and as children engage in more online activities, the importance of children having the necessary skills to move forward in a post-COVID scenario cannot be overstressed. It is therefore important that online and remote programme conceptualizers include a digital literacy component in their interventions to create digital citizens who know how to use the internet responsibly and encourage their peers to do the same improving children’s digital literacy skills.