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 2023 GAME had +1,500 volunteers who facilitated street sports practices, tournaments, workshops, and open gyms in +100 neighborhoods across EMEA. The engagement of this record high number of volunteer role models has allowed GAME to increase its vigor in creating equal opportunities for all children and youth.
In 2022 GAME’s revenue grew by a whooping 32% to a historical new high of 6.1M € (2021: 4.63M €). This allowed the organization 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 organization 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 organization 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 six years, GAME has successfully scaled the impact by providing micro grants worth 2 mill. USD 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.
An acute need for social change in urban areas due to an increase in urban youth populations and 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 younger generations challenged by marginalization, socio-economics, and gender & health inequity.
A set of five Design Principles together with an online Innovation Toolbox have also been developed to ensure 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 these.
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.
