Benefits of Sport
More than one-third of Canadian children cannot participate
in sports or recreational activities due to financial barriers.
Through sports, children are able to establish a pattern of physical activity that continues on into adulthood, helping to build self-esteem, leadership skills and social skills.
With the financial support of A4K, these children can turn their participation in sports into a greater learning tool, where they can discover team-building skills, learn how to cope with failure, increase their confidence and build character.
Sport helps Canadian youth by: *
- Keeping children and youth active and healthy
Regular participation in physical activity during childhood and adolescence can help build a healthy body, control weight, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, and reduce feelings of anxiety and depression.
- Using sport to reduce youth health risk behaviours
Young athletes are more likely than non-athletes to eat healthily and weigh less, and less likely to smoke cigarettes, use drugs, engage in sexual activity, or be bored or hopeless.
- Fostering positive youth development
Sport contributes positively to adolescent identity formation, a critical step in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Sport also facilitates friendships and positive social relations.
- Enhancing academic achievement
Sport and physical education can help improve young people’s school attendance, behaviour, and academic achievement.
- Teaching positive values and life skills
Sport offers young people a means to gain and enhance a range of life skills that can improve their chances of finding employment, raise their level of income, and make them more optimistic and willing to volunteer in the community.
- Preventing youth crime and gang involvement
Youth who participate in sport are less likely to engage in delinquent behaviour and have lower rates of criminal arrest.
