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The conference in Casablanca was the second in row aiming to discuss sport as a tool for gender equity. It consisted of workshops and participants were requested to participate actively.

Funded by Nike, Association Marocaine Sport & Développement (AMSD), Mama Cash, NCDO, Swiss Academy for Development and Women Win to the conference ‘Gender Equity in Sport for Social Change’ on May 19-22, in Casablanca , Morocco . The conference was held in conjunction with the ‘9 ème édition de la Course Féminine’.
With at least 20,000 girls and women participating in the 10k run/walk.

Nike (www.nikeresponsibility.com) is an active advocate of women in sport and prioritizes gender equity in its corporate responsibility strategy.

Nawal el Moutawakel, the first North African and Muslim woman to win Olympic gold and current member of the IOC, has made part of her post Olympic legacy supporting gender equity and development through sport via her organisation AMSD (www.amsd.ma).

Mama Cash (www.mamacash.org), the second largest women’s fund in the world, based in the Netherlands , supports the most pioneering and groundbreaking women’s rights initiatives worldwide. Quite recently, and with support from Nike, Mama Cash made sport for gender equity a new focus activity. The organisers are happy and proud that their r last year’s meeting had such a positive follow-up thus creating an excellent practical and evidence base for this year’s conference.

SAD (www.sad.ch) is dedicated to the question of how societies handle social change and cultural diversity. They will focus their efforts within the Casablanca conference at research, M&E, reporting and publishing.

Women Win (www.womenwin.org) is in the process of becoming the first women’s global sport for gender equity fund.

NCDO’s (www.ncdo.nl) core goal is to strengthen and highlight public support for international cooperation and sustainable development, and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Within the aim of this conference NCDO’s sportsprogram will help raising awareness on this subject on an international platform.

The next step meeting will be held in Namibia on 19-21 September 2007, to be organised by UK Sport.
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For further information on this theme and on follow-up workshos can be found at:
www.sportdevelopment.org
www.toolkitsportdevelopment.org
www.sportanddev.org
www.nikebiz.com
www.amsd.ma
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