Can sport be a scalable tool for peacebuilding?

How PeacePlayers Northern Ireland partnered with Spring Impact to scale its programme and deliver lasting peacebuilding outcomes across the country.

Youth development | Peacebuilding | United Kingdom

Since 2002, PeacePlayers:NI has used basketball to break down religious divisions and build positive relationships among Catholic and Protestant young people in Northern Ireland in order to promote sustainable peace.

PeacePlayers:NI creates safe spaces for young people to play, learn, and lead together, developing a pipeline of future peacebuilders. In 2020, after 16 years of impactful work mainly in Belfast, PeacePlayers:NI joined Spring Impact’s Scale Accelerator to focus on expanding its impact across the country.

Challenge

To achieve their vision of expanding into all 11 council areas across Northern Ireland, PeacePlayers:NI needed to scale their proven programmes, which foster mutual respect and tolerance by creating safe spaces for young people to play basketball, beyond Belfast.

However, the challenge went beyond replication – in order to drive lasting change, PeacePlayers:NI also had to tackle the barriers that existed within Northern Ireland’s key institutions that young people encounter even when they desire change.

IMPACT

70+

Coaches trained

and deployed

6,000+

Young people

engaged

11

Council areas targeted for replication by 2026

“Spring Impact helped us think bigger and more strategically, equipping us with the tools and confidence to expand our programmes while tackling the institutional barriers young people face every day.”

— Gareth Harper, Manager Director – PeacePlayers:NI

Our approach

To set PeacePlayers:NI up for sustainable and systemic scale across Northern Ireland, our work focused on three key areas.

Designing the replication model

PeacePlayers:NI defined the core elements of what makes their programmes impactful and developed a model where local coordinators in each council area would lead delivery by recruiting basketball coaches, engaging schools to participate in PeacePlayers:NI’s programmes, and securing funding.

PeacePlayers:NI created a framework for working with the local coordinators and developed comprehensive support packages to support them to deliver with quality.

Planning for implementation and sustainability

The PeacePlayers:NI team established a phased rollout to test key assumptions and to prioritise learning over rapid expansion.

By applying a ‘plan-do-review’ framework to guide testing, PeacePlayers:NI strengthened school partnerships and built capacity for sustainable, system-wide growth across Northern Ireland.

Thinking strategically about institutional barriers

The work to tackle institutional barriers ran in parallel with scaling PeacePlayers:NI’s programmes. Capacity and resource constraints meant that it was not possible to engage every institution at the same time.

PeacePlayers:NI developed a tool to prioritise which ones to work with first and defined the specific changes they aimed to achieve within these priority institutions before planning the activities and actions needed to deliver them.

RESULTS

A clear route to sustainable scale: PeacePlayers built a detailed roadmap to reach all 11 council areas by 2026, supported by recruitment frameworks, quality controls, and network structures, providing everything needed for successful replication.

Testing and learning before scaling: A structured approach to testing key assumptions reduced risks and ensured the model could adapt to local contexts before full rollout.

Scaling programs and shifting systems in parallel: While expanding proven youth programmes, PeacePlayers also piloted institutional partnerships with teachers and schools, moving beyond working with young people to changing the systems that affect them.

Fostering local ownership for lasting impact: The model shifts from HQ-led funding to locally-driven leadership and fundraising, embracing adaptability and continuous learning on the ground for long-term sustainability.

“The support was instrumental in helping us design a realistic, sustainable path to scale, future-proofing our work and strengthening our ability to deliver peacebuilding impact across Northern Ireland.”