ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the pioneering voyage of the author in what were, at the time he set sail, the largely uncharted waters of SDP (Sport for Development and Peace) by recounting the circumstances that led him to establish ‘Belfast United’, the world’s first ever sport-based peace building programme in Northern Ireland. The chapter goes onto demonstrate how, over time and operating under the umbrella of Football4Peace (F4P), this initiative provided the foundation for the development of a number of linked sport-based peace-building programmes in the Middle East and some of the world’s other most troubled and fractured societies. Based on case study material drawn from these F4P interventions, this chapter concludes by presenting the template for critical proactivism: a practice-informed theoretical and methodological model for undertaking progressive sport-based transformative interventions.
