Improving Mental Health & Behaviour through Sports in SA & beyond

The Social Innovation

Magnitude of the Problem, and its Root Causes

However, millions of children from violent & unstable communities experience trauma without access to emotional support. According to the Harvard Centre for the Developing Child, the continued activation of a child’s stress response system can lead to a condition called ‘Toxic Stress’, which can have dramatic effects on a child's physical and mental health if left unresolved. 

Poor mental health is projected to cost the global economy $6 trillion annually by 2030 with more than 80% of the global mental health burden occurring in low-middle income countries (United for Mental Health).

During their participation in the 2016 and 2023 Globalizers co-created by Ashoka with Fossil Foundation and Fit for Life Foundation respectively, the Waves for Change team outlined some of the key factors behind the inaccessibility of emotional support include:

• Focus on scaling treatment programmes, which are often rooted in talk therapy with is less attractive for youth and expensive and complex to scale
• Lack of safe third spaces for children to play and relax (outside of home and school which can be stressful)
• Lack of adults trained in basic resilience building caregiving techniques
• Lack of investment in resilience building programmes that protect against toxic stress
• Inconsistent training for local coaches to lead resilience building programmes 

Based on their systems change analysis, the Waves for Change team identified a huge opportunity and made it their mission to better equip coaches to build resilience of vulnerable children using play.

We were doing something that was really effective, very much in isolation- reaching a few 1000 kids on the beaches of South Africa.  But there are processes within that surfing program, for example how we trained our staff and how we structured our sessions, that had far wider application. - That's what the Globalizer helped us understand- how do we unlock that value so more people can use it. With Take 5, we’re creating more spaces where children can play, relax and thrive. The secret is in how we mobilise... and we mobilise with Take 5! 

Strategy to Catalyze a Network of Changemakers towards the Targeted Mission

The strategy revolved around codifying their coach training and support/supervision process so others can use it.

Some of the tactics they deployed towards the mission as a part of the strategy include:

1) Involving and Inviting players that Employ Coaches to Adapt their Innovation by Manualizing their Coach Training Protocol 

The World Health Organisation had recently recognized physical activity as an active ingredient in mental health promotion and the prevention programmes. In response, governments and humanitarian organisations have mobilised large networks of coaches to deliver physical activity programmes to vulnerable communities.

To support these efforts, Waves for Change developed a scalable coach training and supervision protocol, based on the successful protocol developed to grow their youth centres across South Africa, to better equip coaches to build resilience of vulnerable children using play. 

The protocol focused on teaching 9 resilience-building coaching skills to improve coaches’ ability to work with vulnerable children. The protocol also taught coaches a simple, memorable five step routine to augment the physical activity and play sessions coaches already delivered. 

The 5-step routine – named ‘The Take 5 Routine’, contains intentional play and song-based games that boost the social connections children form through sport as well as integrating simple self-regulation techniques – without disrupting the main focus of a sport or play based session – uninterrupted fun play! 
To assist in the scale-up of Take 5, the team manualized the Take 5 approach. 

Organisations who want to use Take 5 can now access a Coach Training and Supervision guide. This helps organisations rapidly embed the Take 5 model in their existing programmes to make their coaches more motivated and competent. For coaches working with children, a Take 5 coaching guide exists. This helps coaches master the Take 5 teaching routine and 9 resilience building caregiver skills. 

Both the above guides are also available digitally, free of charge, to help organisations providing sport, arts and culture-based programmes improve their offering to children around the globe. Read more about Take 5 and Waves for Change here. 

2) Collaborating with Strategic Organizations delivering Physical Activity Programmes to Pilot and Scale the Take 5 Train-the-trainer for Coaches

Waves for Change researched which organisations were delivering physical activity programmes at scale and trained their managers to embed the Take 5 model in their national programmes. Pilot partners included UNICEF South Sudan and the Department of Culture, Arts and Sport for the Western Cape. 

Pilot studies showed that the Take 5 model improved training and supervision for coaches as well as motivation and competency outcomes for coaches. In other words, coaches got better! This led to improved attendance at sessions run by these coaches, and improved wellbeing and resilience outcomes for children attending their sessions. 

In 2025, UNICEF’s ESARO office opened a special Take 5 fund, allowing any UNICEF offices in the South and East regions of Africa to apply for training in Take 5. In 2026, UNICEF offices in Malawi, Ethiopia and Kenya will be embedding the model in their child protection and education responses. 

Since the Waves for Change team open accessed the Take 5 model and supervised a handful of trainers across each partner (governments and humanitarian orgs), 2,500 adults who are employed by these organizations to provide sport, play and arts programming to more than 95,000 children have been trained and are up taking the Take 5 model.