Football United - as part of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Public Health and Community Medicine (SPHCM) - successfully secured a Linkage Grant (2009-2011) through the Australian Research Council (ARC). The ground-breaking longitudinal study is the first of its kind globally to evaluate the impact of football and sport on social cohesion and community participation of refugee populations in urban areas.

The ARC Linkage Grant had five clear aims:

  1. First, to determine the impact of Football United on participants’ personal development, sense of self, physical, emotional, mental health and resilience.

  2. Second, to determine the impact of Football United on community capacity and social cohesion.

  3. Third, to document issues arising from implementation of the program in order to form future program implementation and replication of the intervention in other contexts.

  4. Fourth, to test innovative research methodologies that yield information about the way refugees negotiate with sport and Australian social expectations.

  5. Finally, to identify strategies to promote ethical community sporting intervention programs.

Read the report (pdf download). 

Publications:

Football United: Addressing Equity Gaps Through Football (2012) A Bunde-Birouste, S Nathan, T Shwe, B McCarroll

Kicking Goals for Social Change (2013) A Bunde-Birouste

The impacts of a football program on young people’s peer, prosocial and cross-cultural relationships (2013) S Nathan, L Kemp, A Bunde-Birouste, J MacKenzie, C Evers and T Aung Shwe

Moving Beyond the Lump-Sum: Football United and JP Morgan as a Case Study of Partnership for Positive Social Change (2010) A Bunde-Birouste, N Bull, B McCarroll

Social cohesion through football: a quasi-experimental mixed methods design to evaluate a complex health promotion program (2010) S Nathan, A Bunde-Birouste, C Evers, L Kemp, J MacKenzie and R Henley 

Exploration of Sustainable Funding Mechanisms used by football for good organisations (2018) A Bunde-Birouste, M Elkington

Football United Myanmar, Football for Peace 2017-18 Project Evaluation Report (2018) Football United, SPHCM UNSW, Dr T A Shwe, Dr A Bunde-Birouste

End of Project - Independent Evaluation: Football-Based Social Cohesion, Grassroots Peacebuilding and Reconciliation in Kayin State, Myanmar (2018) Dr Ye Swe Htoon

Sport for development: Opening transdisciplinary and intersectoral perspective Social Inclusion, 8(3). Cunningham, R., Bunde-Birouste, A., Rawstorne, P., & Nathan, S. (2020).

Theory of Change in Sports-Based Urban Youth Programs: Lessons from Creating Chances (2021) Rachel Baffsky, University of New South Wales - Kensington Campus, Lynn Kemp, Western Sydney University, and Anne Bunde-Birouste, UNSW

Social Inclusion as a Mechanism and an Outcome in Sport for Good: Football United (2021) Anne Bunde-Birouste, Alex Richmond & Lynn Kemp 

Young People’s Perceptions of the Influence of a Sport-for-Social-Change Program on Their Life Trajectories (2020) Rob Cunningham, Anne Bunde-Birouste *, Patrick Rawstorne, and Sally Nathan