Gates Speaks at Ivy Sports Symposium
November 14, 2014. Coaches Across Continents founder Nick Gates is speaking today on a panel at the 9th annual Ivy Sports Symposium hosted in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. The panel will focus on Sport for Social Impact: Shared Value. It will address the challenges that sport for development organizations face around fundraising, increasing awareness, measuring impact, and establishing strategic partnerships. Additionally the panel will try to answer how individuals and groups aiming to use sport for social change identify and achieve shared value across their work, and how non-profits, for profits, and brands work together to strengthen their impact.
Coaches Across Continents is proud to continue promoting and advocating the field of sport for development This marks the eighth talk that CAC has participated in globally in 2014, including previous engagements in Philadelphia (USA), India, Qatar, South Africa, New York twice (USA), and San Francisco (USA). The Ivy Sports Symposium (ISS) is an annual student-run conference considered among the global sports industry’s premier events. ISS successfully blends an intimate conference setting with dynamic speakers in order to support the cultivation of information sharing and relationship building among the industry’s top leaders and their potential successors. The event inspires innovative approaches and thinking to sport’s greatest opportunities and challenges.
After receiving the Beyond Sport Award last month, Nick Gates is now speaking at the Ivy Sports Symposium
Commonwealth Club hosts panel on Empowering Girls Through Sport
July 19, 2014. Coaches Across Continents founder Nick Gates spoke Thursday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Previous speakers at the prestigious Commonwealth Club have included Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu, and Christopher Hitchens. On Thursday night, Nick was part of a five-person panel that discussed stories on Empowering Girls Through Sport: Giving Girls a Voice and a Choice. Also on the panel was Lorrie Fair (U.S. Women’s 1999 World Cup Champion and current Sports Envoy for the Secretary of State), Lisa Tarver (Co-Founder, One World Futbol), Luis Enrique Bazán (Associate Director of Global Social Justice and Community Action, University of San Francisco), and Ben Gucciardi (Founding Director, Soccer Without Borders).
The panel, moderated by Scott Golde (founder, Sustainable Sports Travel) discussed how NGOs worldwide are using sports as vehicle to raise awareness, build confidence, and educate young women and girls about health issues, including HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, and STDs. Each panelist shared some of their stories from around the world. Nick spoke about Coaches Across Continents work and success stories from our partnerships around the world, specifically some of our work in northern Kenya. Nick told a story of how girls in this community are now in control of their own soccer field where they use sport for social impact. Just a few years ago these same girls were not allowed to play sports and rocks were thrown at them when they tried to step on the very field they now control. The panel was extremely successful and informative for the attendees. The panel is expected to be podcast in the near future.
Coaches Across Continents founder Nick Gates (center) speaks at the Commonwealth Club
Founder Nick Gates Speaks at NSCAA
January 17, 2014. Coaches Across Continents Founder Nick Gates spoke this past weekend at the NSCAA Convention. The topic was “The Real Power of Soccer: Partnerships for Sport in Development.” Joining Nick on the panel were our partners One World Futbol as well as Mary McVeigh from Soccer Without Borders, another strong sport for social impact group whom we work directly with in Uganda. The NSCAA Convention is the largest soccer coaching convention in the world and had an estimated 10,000 people in attendance.
The NSCAA convention allowed our three senior strategists to network and mingle with coaches, organization, and leaders in the sports industry throughout the convention. The Coaches Across Continents team worked the convention alongside two of our main partners at their booths on the convention floor with One World Futbol and XL Soccer World. The work that Coaches Across Continents has done has garnered numerous international awards and offers to speak at various events.