Laurence Chalip, University of Illinois

The rate at which children participate in the most popular youth sports in the United States has been declining in recent years. This rate of decline has been of increasing concern, particularly as it is expected to have negative consequences for the current and future wellbeing of the nation. The recent release of Designed to Move reviewed the risks, and set forth an action agenda to reverse the trend. Although there has been a great deal of conversation in the health and sport communities about the problem, there has been no focused agenda (and no focusing event) to create a groundswell that might support change. Consequently, the Aspen Institute launched Project Play late in 2013 to foster an agenda to change youth sport in ways that could engender broader and longer participation. Using an opening summit followed by a series of national roundtables, Project Play has engaged an array of thought leaders and executives from national sport organizations, and has produced white papers and reports intended to foster changes in the ways that youth sports are designed and delivered to American children. The final report of Project Play was launched in January, 2015 and is followed by a national summit at the end of February, 2015. Throughout the effort, there has been scant engagement of local-level executives and grassroots youth sport programmers. Although reformulation of policies at the national level is clearly important in order to shift the national agenda and consequent culture of youth sport, social change also requires initiatives at the local grassroots level in order to enable changes to occur where they must be implemented. Local level parks and recreation is particularly vital to the youth sport change agenda, but has been missing throughout Project Play. In order to complement Project Play with an initiative focused on the grassroots, a state-based effort was formulated in 2013 and implemented in 2014. It began with a session at the state parks-and-recreation conference in January, and culminated in a summit at the end of September. Working groups were then formed. Although a partnership was formed with Project Play from the outset, the Illinois Youth Sport Summit (which is now the Illinois Youth Sport Initiative) has been allowed to run separately. It is intended to engage the grassroots, and to serve as a model for other states to move forward in comparable fashion. The larger objective is to complement that national initiative with a grassroots initiative. This presentation provides a first-hand account and analysis of the parallel national and state-based efforts. Challenges, complementarities, and needs are described. Implications for planned social and policy change are suggested.