Sport inspires and connects people all over the world - regardless of language, gender or religion. That is why the German Government seeks to better exploit the outstanding potential of “Sport for Development (S4D)” to achieve development goals. In 2003 sport was internationally acknowledged by the UN Resolution 58/5 as “a means to promote education, development, health and peace”. In the Declaration of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the role of sport for social progress is further acknowledged (UN, 2014): "Sport is also an important enabler of sustainable development. We recognize the growing contribution of sport to the realization of development and peace in its promotion of tolerance and respect and the contributions it makes to the empowerment of women and of young people, individuals and communities as well as to health, education and social inclusion objectives."

The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is seeking to make a significant contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and develop approaches using sport in German development cooperation. BMZ commissioned the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH to implement S4D. Throughout the years, a number of strategies, approaches, and methods were tested in various countries worldwide and further developed together with local, national and international partners from politics, civil society, economy and science. 

The S4D Resource Toolkit aims at gathering all these approaches and providing practitioners, policy advisors, interested people and specialists with valuable information. We regard the sharing of knowledge as an essential part of our work in order to contribute to continuous quality improvement in the field of S4D. Furthermore, we hope that anyone new to the field of S4D can gain valuable insight about how to conduct S4D projects successfully.