Inside UNESCO - an Autoethnographic Reflection on Global North Volunteering in Sport-for-Development: Examining Power, Positionality, and Organisational Logics in Viet Nam During COVID-19

Workshop Presentation
Kim Encel  

What values underpin the games we play, and who has the power to define them across cultural and institutional contexts? This interactive workshop draws on critical sport sociology, postcolonial theory, and organisational institutionalism to interrogate the "game logic" embedded in sport-for-development work led by Global North actors in Global South settings. It centres on an autoethnographic case study of my eight-month sport-for-development volunteer role with UNESCO in Viet Nam during the COVID-19 pandemic. While some Global North volunteer narratives emphasise sociopolitical critique, this workshop focuses on how organisational arrangements within intergovernmental systems enable the reproduction of epistemic hierarchies, unpaid labour, and development dependency. Through field notes collected during project planning, stakeholder meetings, and strategy sessions, I explore the tensions of being an unpaid but highly valued Global North volunteer expected to drive UNESCO's sport-for-development strategy in a moment of crisis. Participants will engage in structured dialogue and positionality mapping to reflect on their own institutional roles and how value is produced and recognised in sport-for-development spaces. They will also examine how global funding systems and crisis-response logics reshape what counts as “relevant” development work. Participants will leave with a reflective framework grounded in organisational theory, along with guiding questions to interrogate their own practices. The session will be of particular interest to researchers, educators, and practitioners working in sport-for-development, international education, and global sport governance.