A re­view of the lit­er­a­ture such as Coal­ter 1996, Coak­ley 2002, Nichols 2007, and Rob­bins 1996 et al points to sev­er­al im­por­tant fac­tors that must be present for so­cial sports pro­grammes to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour as well as aid­ing com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment. These fac­tors pro­vide a frame­work to as­sess and eval­u­ate the Life­S­port Pro­gramme and Hoop of Life.

There is no doubt­ing that the biggest losers of the can­cel­la­tion of the well-in­tend­ed Life­S­port Pro­gramme have been tax­pay­ers and the tar­get­ed group of young men. The Cen­tral Au­dit Com­mit­tee re­port in­to the op­er­a­tion Min­istry of Sport's Life­S­port Pro­gramme has stressed sev­er­al fi­nan­cial and man­age­r­i­al dis­crep­an­cies which must be ad­dressed by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties in a time­ly man­ner. The re­port find­ings point to grave wastage of scare fi­nan­cial re­sources. The young men who were in the pro­gramme must feel as though the car­pet has been pulled from un­der their feet. It is dif­fi­cult not to sur­mise that this is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of where eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly dis­ad­van­taged per­sons are made to pay a heavy price for wan­ton mis­man­age­ment by those giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­liv­er im­por­tant so­cial ser­vices to the pub­lic.

Con­cep­tu­al­is­ing and the­o­ris­ing how so­cial sport­ing pro­grammes are to op­er­ate is crit­i­cal not on­ly to meet­ing their de­sired out­comes but equal­ly im­por­tant for iden­ti­fy­ing the cor­rect tools to eval­u­ate their ef­fec­tive­ness. Prop­er plan­ning min­imis­es the pos­si­bil­i­ties of wastage of fi­nan­cial re­sources whether pri­vate or pub­lic. It is very mind­bog­gling that both the Life­S­port Pro­gramme and the Hoop of Life were aimed to ad­dress­ing the con­cerns of youth at risk yet still op­er­at­ed out of dif­fer­ent min­istries! Ad­di­tion­al­ly, were there oth­er ways in which these pro­grammes could have be or­ga­nized so as to utilise ex­ist­ing sport­ing struc­tures such as the na­tion­al bas­ket­ball struc­ture in the case of the Hoop of Life to yield greater suc­cess both in terms of the de­sired ef­fects as well as the man­age­ment of funds?

Re­search has shown that when em­pha­sis is placed on de­vel­op­ing skills and build­ing so­cial in­ter­ac­tion as op­posed to fo­cus­ing on com­pe­ti­tion and ag­gres­sion, there is a greater prob­a­bil­i­ty that sports can be ef­fec­tive in re­duc­ing youth crime and vi­o­lence. There­fore, one has to ask the ques­tion as to whether or not the Hoop of Life bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion is be­ing ful­ly ef­fec­tive as it is a case of the win­ner gets the most. The win­ner gets $1.5mil­lions dol­lars, 2nd place $500,000 and 3rd place $250, 000 and 4th $100.000. What hap­pens to the oth­er 56 teams? As a re­sult of this the gaps be­tween the com­mu­ni­ties would on­ly widen and there­by de­feat the pur­pose of the ob­jec­tives of the pro­gramme.

A crit­i­cal fac­tor high­light­ed for the suc­cess of many so­cial pro­grammes have been where coach­es, men­tors, and role mod­els have been trained in con­flict res­o­lu­tion, deal­ing with sen­si­tive is­sues re­lat­ing to youth and en­sur­ing that the goals of the pro­gramme are al­ways pur­sued. It will be in­ter­est­ing to find out whether or not the coach­es, men­tors etc that have been used in the var­i­ous so­cial sport­ing pro­grammes were trained as to how to ef­fec­tive­ly in­ter­act with the tar­get­ed au­di­ence. It is im­por­tant to note that for­mer na­tion­al play­ers and or just car­ry­ing the ti­tle of coach does not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­di­cate that these per­sons can deal with the so­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal is­sues that may be re­lat­ed to youth. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, not all suc­cess­ful sports per­son­nel may be good role mod­els for those per­sons who are striv­ing to cor­rect de­viant be­hav­iour.

So­cial sport­ing pro­grammes have shown to be ef­fec­tive when par­ents, schools and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers are part of ei­ther the de­ci­sion mak­ing process and or the im­ple­men­ta­tion process. This will how­ev­er, de­pend on the size of the pro­gramme. Get­ting es­tab­lished sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions for in­stance sport­ing clubs in com­mu­ni­ties to be part of the pro­gramme may pro­vide a good start­ing point for the pro­gramme be­ing ef­fec­tive. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it may serve to min­imise some of the neg­a­tive stig­ma that is at­tached to state pro­grammes if they stand alone.

It is al­so very im­por­tant to ac­knowl­edge that "one size fits all" ap­proach­es may not nec­es­sar­i­ly work. What may be good for one com­mu­ni­ty may not nec­es­sar­i­ly work in an­oth­er. If com­mu­ni­ties are to be hooked in­to the var­i­ous pro­grammes they have to be part of the de­ci­sion mak­ing process. The youth have to have a say or else they will feel mar­gin­alised and see the pro­gramme as yet an­oth­er way for adults to tell what is good for them!

As we move in­to the fu­ture, it is im­por­tant that politi­cians, tech­nocrats and who­ev­er else end up mak­ing pub­lic de­ci­sions take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the fol­low­ing is­sues. First­ly, so­cial sport­ing pro­grammes must be de­vel­oped on ev­i­dence and pos­si­ble so­lu­tions are prac­ti­cal. Sec­ond­ly, pro­grammes should be sus­tain­able.

This is prob­lem­at­ic when the state is the main bene­fac­tor, for when the gov­ern­ment changes there is no guar­an­tee the pro­gramme will con­tin­ue and third­ly, rig­or­ous eval­u­a­tions must be un­der­tak­en to iden­ti­fy that fac­tors that in­flu­ence crime re­duc­tion, pro-so­cial be­hav­iour and change in young peo­ple.