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October 4, 2024
The Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative is accepting applications for its 2025 Service Learning Through Sports cohort through December 1, 2024. The one-year program provides micro-grants and mentorship programming to select U.S. high school students who lead, or aim to lead, a project or initiative addressing an issue of sports access. The funding is made possible through a grant from The Allstate Foundation, which empowers youth aged 5-25 to serve and improve communities.
The Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Program is supporting youth committed to making sport more accessible in their communities. Through its signature Project Play initiative, it develops, applies and shares knowledge that helps stakeholders build healthy communities through sports. A key learning is that the supply of sport opportunities is not meeting student demands. Its “School Sports Equity Toolkit” showed that young people want sport and can go to great lengths to create new sport opportunities for their communities. In addition, the act of improving access for others can produce meaningful service learning.
This discovery led to the creation of the Service Learning Through Sports program which identifies young leaders who address an issue in sport in their communities and supports their endeavors:
- Students will receive a $2,000 micro-grant through an affiliated non-profit host organization for a sports-focused project that they lead.
- Students will attend a learning retreat before the annual Project Play Summit. They can discuss and brainstorm with the full cohort, a set of peer mentors and Aspen staff. This includes travel and hotel costs.
- Over one year, students will have the opportunity for ongoing peer mentorship and guidance through virtual meetings.
“Through using youth volunteers who are motivated, we want to carry on the Sports4Kids sports clinic to low-income schools outside of San Diego. Using this chapter program, we will be able to grow our impact among the low-income youth while still providing quality coaching and athletic opportunities,” said Arden Pala – a 2024 Service Learning Through Sports grant recipient.
U.S. high school students interested in the program (running from January 2025 – December 2025) can apply here.
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