A case study of the lasting impacts of employment in a development through sport, recreation and the arts programme for Aboriginal youth

Abstract

In this article, we explore if/how working for Alberta’s Future Leaders Program (AFL) in Alberta, Canada, had a lasting impact on former employees. Based on interviews with 15 youth workers and one arts mentor, we found the following: (1) by being involved in AFL, the staff members increased their awareness of racism’s and colonialism’s impacts; (2) they learned to challenge stereotypes; and (3) they gained a strong employment trajectory. As a result, they (4) believed that they reaped more benefits from AFL involvement than the programme’s intended beneficiaries. While these findings are troubling in that relatively privileged people may be the programme’s main beneficiaries, which serves to reaffirm and reinforce their privilege, they also show that domestic sport for development programmes can sensitize both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal employees to issues pertaining to racism and colonialism, they have the potential to develop ‘allies’ and also to yield outcomes similar to involvement in international sport for development programmes.