Building Systems Change: Why We Must Center Community-Based Organizations in Youth Sport Equity
When young people are kept from playing sports, the barriers rarely stem from a single cause. Rather, they emerge from complex systems - interconnected policies, funding flows, cultural narratives, and institutional practices that work together to determine who gets access to play, under what conditions, and with what long-term outcomes. For youth furthest from resources, these systemic barriers are steepest.
Understanding Systems Change in Youth Sport
Surface-level interventions alone cannot dismantle these barriers. The Ashoka Systems Change Action Group - a collaboration of funders, practitioners, policymakers, and community leaders - has developed a framework for understanding what systems change actually means in the context of U.S. youth sport.
Systems change is defined as tackling the root causes of a problem by identifying and creating shifts in the systems responsible for that problem. In youth sport, this means moving beyond treating symptoms like dropout rates or burnout to addressing the underlying policies, power dynamics, cultural norms, and institutional structures that uphold inequitable access.
Two Complementary Approaches
The framework makes an important distinction between two forms of action, both of which are necessary:
Direct impact actions address immediate needs - coaching programs, participation opportunities, access to equipment. These serve youth where gaps are urgent and visible.
Systems actions operate further upstream - shifting narratives about play, reshaping policy, building knowledge, advancing collective leadership. These create the conditions that make equitable access sustainable and scalable.
Without systems change, efforts remain fragmented. Communities repeat similar interventions without addressing why inequities exist in the first place. With it, individual efforts become part of a collective force working toward structural transformation.
The Role of Community-Based Organizations
Community-based organizations are uniquely positioned in this work. They are rooted in neighborhoods, understand local contexts, and reach young people others might overlook. When these organizations understand how their direct service work connects to broader systemic shifts, they become more powerful agents of change.
For youth furthest from resources - those less likely to participate or more likely to quit - this connection matters profoundly. It means their realities inform how we think about systems. It means their communities are drivers of change, not just recipients of intervention.
The Framework Papers
Three white papers establish a shared language for systems change:
Executive Summary: A summary of all major themes and takeaways.
White Paper #1: Inequities in youth sport stem from three core problems - inequitable access, commercialization, and fragmentation - that are reinforced by overlapping systems in education, economics, politics, and culture.
White Paper #2: Systems change requires both direct impact actions (coaching, programs, access) and systems actions (policy, narrative, knowledge, leadership) working together to shift the underlying conditions that produce inequity.
White Paper #3: Lasting transformation occurs through four shifts: reimagining roles to center community power, reshaping narratives to affirm play as essential, redefining metrics to measure equity, and realigning practices to position sport as a driver of social outcomes.
These papers detail five foundational reasons why systems change is essential, three dimensions of systems change action, and four desired outcomes that center equity and community-driven approaches.
Moving the Work Forward
The shift from short-term interventions to long-term, scalable outcomes requires clarity on what we're changing and how. It requires seeing that both direct service and systems work are essential. And it requires centering the organizations and communities closest to young people, grounded in their knowledge of what works locally.
When we address the systems that shape youth sport, we fundamentally shift what's possible for every young person.
