Impacting the Pathway to Policy: The 2021 Virtual Sport for Life Canadian Summit
From January 26-29 and February 2-4, Sport for Life hosted the 2021 Virtual Sport for Life Canadian Summit — the first virtual Summit in our history.
Over 1,200 attendees participated in seven days of sessions, keynotes, Q&As, and town halls surrounding the theme of Pathway to Policy. All of the recorded presentations will be available on the Whova platform until May 7. If you didn’t attend the Summit but want to view the recordings, you can register to view them.
From the Foundation of the Pathway stream, through the Athlete Pathway, the Pathway for a Healthy and Active Life, the Pathway for Everyone, and finally the Quality Sport Contributing to Sustainable Development Goals stream — as well as two Francophone Days — all registrants had the chance to engage in challenging and thought-provoking conversations around the core concepts of Long-Term Development. This included discussions around physical literacy, quality sport, inclusion, and lifelong accessibility, and how to use sport policy effectively to provide quality experiences for everyone with sustainable best practices.
In the Pathway for Everyone stream, Canadian national rugby player and speaker Pamphinette Buisa said, “I even felt unqualified to speak on [justice and anti-racism], even as a person of colour, because I was used to a system, structure, of having to conform and perform, rather than inform and reform.”
It’s a quote that, almost two weeks later, continues to resonate from the Summit, and speaks to one of the primary lenses of this year’s event: addressing systemic racism in sport and physical activity, including but not limited to, anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism.
What platform do we each hold, that we may not have fully recognized before, if recognized at all? And how can we create change? How can we inform and reform our organizations?
For those in attendance, it’s questions like these that continue to show the lasting impact of this year’s Summit.
