GAME strives for a world with equal opportunities for all children and youth. To achieve this vision, GAME’s mission is to create lasting social change through youth-led street sports and culture. Many of the nonprofit’s programs seek to integrate vulnerable ethnic-minority youth (refugees, IDPs, immigrants, etc.) into the community and offers the opportunity for them to grow as peer-educators and drivers of social change in their local setting.
The activities are targeted young people in less-advantaged neighborhoods in 10 countries in Europe, The Middle East, and Africa and span across ethnic, religious, and social divides. In 2024 GAME had +1,300 volunteers who facilitated street sports practices, tournaments, workshops, and open gyms in around 100 neighborhoods across EMEA. The Partnership Approach with its record high number of involved communities and partners has allowed GAME to increase its vigor in creating equal opportunities for all children and youth. The strong coalition of partners include a wide variety of small and big actors – from CBO’s based in the Kibera Slum in Nairobi to Microsoft delivering technical skills training through LinkedIn Learning.
Over the past five years, GAME’s revenue has grown by an average of 9.3% per year, resulting in a total revenue in 2024 of 6.0M €. This has allowed the organisation to invest properly in its new strategy which was launched in 2023 under the name “Focusing Our GAME“. The aspiration is to empower young people through street sports and culture in three geographical regions driven by a healthy and thriving organization and access to sustainable funds.
Rather than continuing the rapid growth, the strategy seeks to align the organisation with it’s original outset by reiterating the focus on youth and street culture as well as develop new business models, which may allow the organisation to enter the emerging space for hybrid financing. The strategy spans from 2023-27 and if implemented right, GAME believes it can become the leading community for empowering youth in creating sustainable change through street sports and culture.
Over the past decade, GAME has successfully scaled the impact by providing micro grants worth 2M € to more than 500 youth-led street sports projects. In 2021 this method was exported to Lebanon, where the EU as a trusted donor has asked GAME to implement the Street Sports Incubator.
Today, nearly 60% of the global population lives in cities, including one billion people in slums and informal settlements. Most of them are youth. Urban youth have ideas and dreams and embody huge potential to create change, yet the majority remain excluded from opportunities to influence the future of their own communities. This acute need for social change in urban areas, which is being further reinforced by historically high numbers of people on the move has led GAME to address these challenges through its programming with a stronger focus on social cohesion, health, climate, livelihood and gender equity for underserved urban youth.
A set of five Design Principles together with an online Innovation Toolbox ensures that social design and youth-led innovation stays at the forefront. Having an “ear to the asphalt”, “playing with the ideas”, and “taking it to the street” to test the ideas, constitute three of the main principles.
In 2022 GAME was awarded the Danish Royal Crown Prince Couple’s Social Award for having created “a cool and attractive focal point for positive and strong communities”
In 2019 the facility GAME Aalborg was awarded the IAKS Award for sports architecture. The sustainable and climate friendly re-use of an abandoned, industrial building and the creation of lasting social change through youth-led sports and culture was what convinced the jury.
The GAME House in Aalborg has come into being through a social design-based approach with the youth playing a central role. After the first years of operations, the 4M € facility has attracted more than 4,000 active members of all ages and become the biggest sports provider in Denmark’s fourth largest city.
With the inauguration of GAME House Beirut in 2023, GAME took these capabilities abroad and opened a new chapter operating street sports facilities and impact hubs outside Denmark. A new 6,500 m2 safe space combining street sports with an urban park will be opening in Nairobi, Kenya in 2026, operated by a local CBO. This will be a pilot and flagship for future developments, which increasingly will create jobs for the local youth based on operating revenue generated from minimal entrance fees and other earned income.
