Count Me In: a sports participation intervention promoting inclusion for young people from migrant backgrounds in Australia

Abstract

Participation in organized sports can provide a wide range of health and social benefits and, for young people from migrant and minority ethnic groups, can act as a critical mediator of inclusion and belonging. These population groups have relatively low participation rates however, with recognized barriers including costs, transport, culturally determined gender norms, culturally inappropriate club environments, a lack of knowledge and understanding of sports ‘systems’ and competing family priorities. Count Me In (CMI) was a mixed-methods, participatory action research project designed and implemented in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia between 2017–2019 to address these barriers. Key elements of the intervention included employment of bicultural community support coordinators, partnerships with clubs and community-based organisations, encouragement of volunteering and development of resources. This paper reports the qualitative results of the study and discusses the effectiveness and impacts of the Count Me In model for addressing participation barriers.

Keywords:

• sports participation
• social inclusion
• migrant
• children
• youth
• participatory action research

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge, the input from the broader Count Me In team. A special mention needs to go to our Community Support Coordinators—Sarwat Nauman, Zeina Zogheib and Naz Asim, and the parent volunteers Hureen Saaed, Aisha Nadeem and Naz Asim, who were all vital to engaging the community and the project’s success. We would like to thank the numerous organisational partners Merri Health, Moreland City Council, Hume City Council, Arabic Welfare, Centre for Multicultural Youth, Fawkner Primary School, Badminton Victoria and other members of the Advisory Group, and key personnel from the participating sports clubs. We would like to thank Alana Pirrone for her design of the project materials. Finally, we thank the young people and families who participated so enthusiastically in this project and contributed to its evaluation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest is reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This project was enabled due to funding received from a VicHealth Innovation Grant; a University of Melbourne Early Career Researcher Grant; The Melbourne Social Equity Institute; Merri Health; and Moreland City Council. Substantial in-kind support was received from all community organisational partners.