Sport can be a powerful tool for promoting social cohesion, building trust, and fostering healthy communities. Healthy habits and engagement in sport often begin in childhood and adolescence, yet opportunities to participate can be inaccessible, exclusionary, or short-lived. Project Play, an initiative of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, seeks to change this. Together with the Aspen Institute México, the program will host its first Project Play Global Meeting in November 2026, bringing together representatives from Aspen’s international partners.
The Project Play Global Meeting will focus on the current state of national sport systems and the implementation of the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports. Participants will explore how to build sport systems grounded in human rights, with children’s rights as a foundation for creating stronger, more inclusive models of sport.
Each participating partner is nominating one youth representative to take part in the program. Aspen Germany is proud to nominate Cecilie von Klaeden, a competitive swimmer and swimming coach who brings personal experience and perspective to important questions of accessibility, inclusion, and safety in youth sports. She will join other youth representatives from around the world in New York City from November 3–6, 2026.
