Grassroots diplomacy through coach education: Americans, Jordanians and Tajiks

ABSTRACT

Two coach-to-coach sport diplomacy exchange programmes run between 2012 and 2015 in Jordan Tajikistan, funded by U.S. State Department’s International Sports Programming Initiative, used soccer to promote grassroots diplomacy. These programmes focused on leadership, tolerance, diversity, and citizenship, as well as training coaches to design sport for development and peace programmes in their local communities while learning more about other cultures and building relationships in the process. These two case studies demonstrate how grassroots diplomacy attempts have both succeeded and struggled in the mission to build relationships among people, empower young people and their mentors to be local agents of social change, and strengthen community-based social institutions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Qualitative data obtained from a participant who travelled to the U.S. for an exchange trip and participated in training workshops in Tajikistan with The Sport for Social Change: Tajikistan program: https://cms.bsu.edu/academics/centersandinstitutes/center-for-international-development/grants/exchanges/sportforsocialchange.

2. Nye, Jr., ‘Public Diplomacy and Soft Power’; Hart, Empire of Ideas.

3. Clinton, ‘Leading through Civilian Power’.

4. Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans; Brown, ‘Swinging for the State Department’; Witherspoon and Rider, ed., Defending the American Way of Life.

5. ‘Sports Diplomacy,’ Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State, https://eca.state.gov/programs-initiatives/sports-diplomacy (accessed April 16, 2017).

6. Pigman and Rofe, ‘Sport and Diplomacy’.

7. Jarvie, ‘Sport, development and aid’; Coalter, ‘The politics of sport-for-development’.

8. Straume, ‘Norwegian Naivety Meets Tanzanian Reality,’ 1593.

9. Pearce et al., ‘The Most Effective Way of Delivering’.

10. Kidd, ‘A new social movement,’ 370.

11. Sports Grants, https://eca.state.gov/programs-initiatives/initiatives/sports-diplomacy/sports-grants (accessed June 20, 2018).

12. Coakley, ‘Youth Sports’, 307.

13. Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 (1961), Title 22 Chapter 33 of the United States Code, Section 2451–2255; ‘The Early Years | Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs,’ https://eca.state.gov/fulbright/about-fulbright/history/early-years (accessed October 15, 2016); Lebovic, ‘From War Junk to Educational Exchange’; Bettie, ‘Ambassadors Unaware’.

14. Melissen, ‘The New Public Diplomacy’; Yun and Toth, ‘Future Sociological Public Diplomacy’; L’Etang, ‘Public Relations and Diplomacy in a Globalized World’, 610; Steyn, ‘The Strategic Role of Public Relations’, 520; Payne, ‘Trends in Global Public Relations’, 489; Hinton, et al, ‘The Praxis of Grassroots Diplomacy’.

15. ‘Sports Diplomacy,’ Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State, https://eca.state.gov/programs-initiatives/sports-diplomacy (accessed January 17, 2017).

16. Merriam et al., ‘Power and Positionality’, 411; Banks, ‘The lives and values of researchers’.

17. Ohanyan, ‘Transfer up or down?’, 435.

18. Rasmussen, ‘Educational Exchange as a Cold War Weapon’.

19. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School; Park, ‘Setting the Scene’; Riess, City Games.

20. Darnell, Sport for Development and Peace; Kidd, ‘A new social movement’; Straume, ‘Norwegian Naivety’; Coalter, ‘The politics of sport-for-development’; Jarvie, ‘Sport, development and aid’.

21. Hinton et al., ‘The Praxis of Grassroots Diplomacy’.

22. Dichter, ‘Game Plan for Democracy’; Parks, ‘Welcoming the “Third World”’; Grey, Germany’s Cold War, 87–115.

23. Scott-Smith, Networks of Empire; Kellermann, Cultural Relations as an Instrument, 40; Welch, ‘Citizenship and Politics’.

24. Blom et al., ‘Soccer for Peace’; Cooper, et al, ‘Soccer for Peace in Jordan’.

25. Conroy and Coatsworth, ‘Coach training as a strategy’, 128.

26. Ibid.

27. Little, ‘A Puppet in Search of a Puppeteer?’; Lazarowitz, ‘Different Approaches to a Regional Search’; Barnwell, ‘“Caught Between His Friends and His Enemies”’.

28. Blom et al., ‘Soccer for Peace’.

29. ‘Harvey and Slaton Travel to Jordan as Sports Envoys,’ US Soccer, 14 April 2014, http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2014/04/15/08/56/140414-harvey-slaton-sports-envoys (accessed March 19, 2017); ‘Sports and Public Diplomacy Envoys 2005–2013,’ Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, https://eca.state.gov/programs-initiatives/sports-diplomacy/sports-envoys-and-sports-visitors/sports-and-public-diplomacy#womenssoccer (accessed March 15, 2017).

30. Stedman et al., ‘Sport for Social Change’.

31. Ibid.

32. ‘U.S. Relations with Tajikistan – Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Factsheet,’ US Department of State, 10 February 2016, https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5775.htm (accessed March 10, 2017); Foster, ‘Cleansing violence in the Tajik Civil War’; Crosston, ‘Compromising coalitions and duplicitous diplomacy’.

33. ‘Tajikistan Martial Arts Sports Visitors Program,’ Global Sports Mentoring Program, January 2015, https://globalsportsmentoring.org/sports-visitors-program/tajikistan-martial-arts/ (accessed February 12, 2017); Aziza Kayumova: A Martial Artist Creates a Platform for Girls in Sport,” Global Sports Mentoring, https://globalsportsmentoring.org/global-sports-mentor-program/emerging-leaders/aziza-kayumova/ (accessed March 19, 2017).

34. Trulson, ‘Martial arts training’.

35. Crawford, ‘No continuing city’; Gresham, ‘Trusting relationships’; Grey and Coates, ‘From indigenization to cultural relevance’.

36. For the SPUJ and SSC programs an initial survey of the Jordanian and Tajik coaches captured their baseline data relating to skills and understanding. The participants’ daily journal entries included likert-scale questions and two open-ended questions. The partner individuals (Ball State University personnel, host families) also completed surveys on their experiences. Additionally, for the portions of the programs in both the U.S. and Jordan/Tajikistan, the Jordanian and Tajik participants completed a pre-test and post-event test based on soccer and peaceful living skills to measure knowledge gained.

37. Dogjas et al., ‘Religion, culture and sport’.

38. Blom et al., ‘Soccer for Peace’; Cooper, et al, ‘Soccer for Peace in Jordan’.

39. Pearce et al., ‘The Most Effective Way’.

40. Data analysed through NVivo software from The Final Project Survey (Tajikistan exchange) developed by the Ball State Social Science Research Centre, which included 26 closed-ended Likert items and 4 open-ended items. This instrument measured the overall experience, the instruction, the overall project’s performance in developing the participants’ understanding and confidence, the degree of perceived preparation of coaching soccer and peaceful living skills, as well as understanding of cultures different than their own. The ten teachers who trained in the U.S. and then participated in the workshops in Tajikistan completed this final survey.

41. Kellermann, Cultural Relations; Scott-Smith, ‘The Ties that Bind’; de Lima Jr., ‘The role of international educational exchanges’.

42. Gresham, ‘Trusting relationships’.

43. Men’s Ranking, 7 June 2018, https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/index.html (accessed June 10, 2018); Women’s Ranking, 23 March 2018, https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/women/index.html (accessed 10 June 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Sports United: International Sports Programming Initiative.