‘Giving Back to the Community”: Young and established leaders’ perspectives of their contributions to the Arctic Winter Games.

Abstract

The crux of our work in this case study and the research project in general explores the concept of giving back, a key aspect of community engagement, and a new concept to be applied to the AWG in a research context. We contextualize the third case study by first outlining the Arctic Winter Games history, mission, and vision, as gleaned from Arctic Winter Games informational materials (e.g., website, etc.) and academic research articles (e.g., Ferez et al. 2018, Filice, 2011). Next, we explain the methodology and research questions. The results are then presented and discussed; we open this section with data that explains how young and established leaders describe the AWG, including what “community” they perceive to serve while working for the AWG and what their sense of belonging is, with respect to the AWG. The analysis then turns to the young and established leaders’ (aged 22-73) experiences at the AWG. We attempt to explain how these leaders make sense of their responsibilities and actions in their leadership roles as an expression of their commitment to children and youth in their “communities” – in other words – the essence of their motivation to support and help others. To contextualize these experiences and help explain how and why the AWG young and established leaders continue their involvement with the club, recruitment and training processes are discussed. We conclude by examining the positive impact that the AWG is having on its participants as well as young and established leaders by asking the AWGIC and Host Societies to explore a few ideas we believe might help them continue to strengthen the “AWG community” through their work while at the same time acting as innovators in the larger Canadian sport community by continuing to deeply challenge sport and physical activity systems. Our goal with this report is to shed light on how young and established leaders involved with the AWG feel about giving back to their community (however they define it) and provide those associated with the AWG with some ideas for cultivating this notion of giving back among peoples of the circumpolar North.