https://www.sportanddev.org/latest/news/power-sports-refugee-integration
The International Refugee Integration and Settlement Exchange (IRISE) dedicated its Third Virtual Exchange, on 13 November 2025, to the power of sports in refugee integration. The event brought together 171 stakeholders and practitioners across seven countries to connect, share, and showcase a diverse range of successful local initiatives. In this article, we introduce IRISE, share our reflections and key takeaways from the event, and invite people and organisations to get involved in continuing the conversation.
Beyond the sidelines: The power of sports in refugee integration
Beyond the Sidelines was a dynamic global gathering that brought together practitioners, researchers, athletes, and community leaders to explore the powerful role of sport in providing safe pathways for refugees, fostering integration, and strengthening social cohesion. Drawing on lived experience, emerging research, and on-the-ground community programs from across the US, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, the event offered both inspiration and practical insights.
The session opened with a panel discussion highlighting sport’s ability to act as a pathway to safety, and into community, belonging, and opportunity. Kizito Kalima, founder of the Peace Center for Forgiveness and Reconciliation (PCFR), shared his remarkable journey from surviving the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda to resettling in the US as a high-school basketball player. Basketball gave Kalima access to safety, education, new community bonds, and long-term stability, and he now works to extend similar opportunities to youth affected by conflict and genocide. Through PCFR, Kalima uses sports like basketball and dance as tools for healing, reconciliation, leadership development, and cross-cultural relationship building, often operating with limited funding and facilities. PCFR’s sports-focused programming has helped young people complete their education (and access higher education opportunities through athletic scholarships), build confidence, forge relationships with the broader community, such as through a basketball program with the local police department, and develop a genuine sense of belonging rather than being treated as outsiders.
This community-centered approach was echoed at a broader scale by Graham Clifford, founder of the global movement, Sanctuary Runners. What began as a local initiative in Ireland in 2018 has grown into an international movement with more than 40 running groups and tens of thousands of participants, bringing together people seeking international protection and long-time residents through running, walking, and other accessible activities. Sanctuary Runners emphasises integration as a two-way reciprocal process, stressing that social inclusion requires effort from host communities as well as newcomers. The time spent by Sanctuary Runners groups engaging in shared physical activity, whether running side by side or walking together in silence, has created the space needed for connection, well-being, and mutual understanding. Clifford shared how, by wearing the same shirts and moving together, participants become part of one team, challenging stereotypes and building solidarity at scale. Remarkably, an impact study found that 85% of newcomers residing in Direct Provision who were involved in Sanctuary Runners reported feeling more welcome in Ireland, while 81% of Irish participants said they had formed friendships with Direct Provision residents through the program.
Rounding out the panel, Ramón Spaaij, one of this article’s authors, unpacked what research tells us about the promises and pitfalls of sport in settlement. Spaaij highlighted sport’s potential to promote psychosocial wellbeing, resilience, and social inclusion, while also cautioning against simplistic or instrumental approaches. He emphasised the importance of strengths-based, context-specific programming that values joy, creativity, and bodily expression, rather than reducing participants to athletes or talent pipelines. His research also underscores persistent inequalities, including gendered and racialised barriers to participation, and calls for coalition-building and policy change across schools, clubs, and governments to create genuinely inclusive ecosystems.
Following the speaker portion of the event, IRISE facilitators led interactive breakout rooms where over 150 attendees exchanged ideas and insights across countries and time zones. Discussions focused on what makes sport-based initiatives involving refugees meaningful and sustainable, including community leadership, trust-building, collaboration with settlement services, flexible programming, and prioritising wellbeing over performance. The breakout sessions also featured “spotlight” speakers from a diverse range of organisations implementing impactful sport-for-settlement programs, spanning outdoor and adventure sports, street basketball, football/soccer, and many other athletic activities. The line-up of spotlight speakers included:
- Sagalee Omer, Shooters Shoot, Australia
- Junior Melo, Centre for Multicultural Sport (CMSport), Australia
- Carolyn Trono, Winnipeg Newcomer Sport Academy, Canada
- Jess McFadyen, Capital Football, New Zealand
- Shana Wills and Wagdi Abdelmouli, Refugee Education and Adventure Challenge (REACH), United States
The Padlet that was created specifically for the event contains a summary of the event with links to resources shared. This padlet is freely available on the IRISE webpage.
Key takeaways
Across all sessions, a clear message emerged: sport is far more than physical activity; it is a bridge, a connector, and a platform for dignity, hope, and belonging. When intentionally designed and equitably delivered, sport can foster psychosocial wellbeing, open educational and career pathways, support trauma recovery, and build stronger, more inclusive communities. To unlock these outcomes, we must continue to address inequities in access and opportunity in sport. This includes the need to recognise intersectionality, how multiple forms of discrimination or exclusion can overlap, such as race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and legal status.
Call to action
This event not only celebrated the diverse ways sport is being used globally, but also sparked new connections and shared learning to strengthen sport-for-settlement work worldwide. IRISE welcomes those working with refugees in resettlement contexts to reach out and get involved in future conversations. Learn more by contacting IRISE through the Secretariat. We invite you to get involved and continue the conversation by building on the IRISE platform, which provides a way to connect with other organisations and programs, learn from diverse contexts, share your experiences, and reflect on your own practices. We are keen to learn about future events you are running or are interested in running in collaboration. Through collaboration and bringing together diverse knowledges and experiences, we can strengthen the positive impact that sports can have as community spaces where shared experience and a sense of belonging are promoted and supported.
About IRISE
IRISE is a civil society initiative launched in 2025 to foster connections and collaboration across international borders between organisations, groups, and individuals involved in supporting refugee settlement and integration. The purpose of IRISE is to create opportunities for people engaged at local or national levels to exchange ideas, inspiration, and information across international borders with a shared vision of creating communities where refugees resettling or arriving through complementary pathways are welcomed, valued, included, supported, and can thrive. We do this because we know that the better we can support refugee newcomers to settle in our communities and show how remarkably successful refugee resettlement has been, the better we can demonstrate why we should keep these pathways to safety open – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes our communities that much better.
IRISE’s activities focus on:
- Knowledge exchange: Creating opportunities for ideas, information, and inspiration to be shared across borders to address common experiences and challenges faced by refugees arriving through resettlement and complementary pathways.
- Network building: Creating opportunities for connections to be made between organisations, groups, and individuals involved in supporting refugee settlement and integration at a local or national level, and their peers in other countries.
- Centring refugee expertise: Providing a space that centres lived experience to better shape and inform refugee settlement and integration.
IRISE is an initiative of the Refugee Council of Australia, Canadian Council for Refugees, Refugee Council USA, and the New Zealand Red Cross.
