1st Edition

Managing International Sport-for-Development

By Joel Rookwood Copyright 2026
272 Pages
by Routledge

272 Pages
by Routledge

This book critically examines the multifaceted role of sport in global development. It analyses the potential of sport in facilitating social transformation and addresses the challenges of implementing and managing complex projects across diverse cultural and political landscapes.  Drawing on the author’s 20 years’ experience of research and practice in sport-for-development across six... Read more

1. Managing Sport-for-Development Projects: Concepts, Agencies, Methods, and the 2003 India Initiative

2. Implementing a Football Coach Education Programme in Postcolonial Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique 

3. Building Social Integration through ‘Play’ and Football in Azerbaijan: Nagorno-Karabakh’s Internally Displaced Communities 

4. Health Promotion and Social Development through Sport: The Chernobyl Disaster Rehabilitation Camp and the Youth Prisoner and Street Children Projects in Belarus and Ukraine 

5. Using Football to Support an HIV/AIDS Education Initiative in Honduras 

6. Volunteerism and Development in the Golden Triangle and the Slums of Bangkok: Sport Provision for the Street Children of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos 

7. Sport-based Voluntourism in a Bolivian Orphanage: Coaching Football on the ‘Roof of the World’ 

8. Sport Camps in War-Torn Ukraine: Contextualising and Concluding the Lessons Learned from Early Sport-for-Development Projects

Biography

Joel Rookwood is Director of the Sport and Exercise Management programme at University College Dublin, Ireland. He is Co-chair of the Football Collective, a global network of applied football researchers and practitioners. Joel has worked extensively in sport-for-development, leading educational, peacebuilding initiatives across six continents. His research interests include international development, sports mega-events, international relations, the football industry, and sports governance. His latest books include Football, Development and Peace: Local Projects in Global Contexts (Routledge, 2026), Sport, Peace and Development: Critical Global Challenges (2025), Sports Fanaticism on Social Media Platforms: Security Implications and Counter-Policy (2025), and The Sport Mega Events of the 2020s: Governance, Impacts and Controversies (Routledge, 2024).