ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the growing and expanding area of sport development provision and policy called ‘sport-for-development’. It defines and outlines how the origins of sport being used as a tool for wider social good are not new. Historical origins of this arguably lie in the very foundations of the birth of sport development officers in the unrest of the 1980s in the UK. However, it maps this into more contemporary visions and philosophy and arguable ‘movements’ in the UK that have seen the burgeoning growth of a new sub-sector. Mental health, crime prevention, youth engagement, education and addressing social inequalities are all tabled issues that the sport-for-development sector attack with great gusto. What it tries to do is introduce students to beginning to develop a more critical eye for where there are valid claims to make such sport development goals and where perhaps there is greater need for research into the potential of specific interventions to deliver such complex programmes.
