Positive people and confident competitors: resilient youth development through sport and physical activity

In the altering world scenario, there is a necessity to plan, prepare and progress with youth development. Research has associated positive youth development with the 5Cs model (competence, confidence, connection, character and caring) (Lerner et al., The Journal of Early Adolescence 25:17–71, 2005) to build resilience in youth. Over the past 35 years, sport psychology has established that sport helps in developing necessary psychological skills and attributes among youth. Youth sport is an extracurricular activity that provides young people with unique negative and positive experiences. Within these experiences, the individual goes beyond the self and has to work with a diverse group of others for self-development and achievement of shared goals. In this chapter, our primary objective is to review the foundations of literature concerning confidence, resilience and identity as cornerstones for positive youth development through sport. To achieve this objective, we adopt a global approach blending field experience from participatory sport, developmental sport and elite sport to provide an intervention framework grounded in applied sport psychology. Intervention framework provided is aligned to the COM-B behaviour change model (Michie et al. 2011) for sustainable change. The focus is on a balance between developing stable protective factors for mental health and positive youth development to ensure appropriate cognitive, social, emotional and behaviour skills to thrive in an evolving world. Implications for transferring this learning cross-culturally and in non-sport contexts such as schools and grass-root programs are discussed with recommendation for good practice.