Boxing is Love at the UN ECOSOC Youth Forum 2026

This year's side event, "Martial Arts for Sustainable Development: By Youth and For Youth — Community Action for the SDGs", brought together grassroots organisations, partners, and young leaders from across the globe to explore how martial arts-based initiatives are contributing to education, inclusion, and community development.

The session featured inspiring work from organisations spanning four continents: Acciona para el Cambio Social (Guatemala), Arena Fitness Dojo (Philippines), SOMA Association (Spain), and Wushu Sport Association (Brazil), each demonstrating impact that sport can have at the community level in differnet ways.

We were proud to have our Director of Programmes, Shelly Lee, represent Boxing Is Love® on the panel alongside Danilo Malafaia from the Martial Arts Coalition for Sustainable Development and Kateryna Biloruska from the Kateryna Biloruska Foundation, reflecting our commitment to ensuring that community-led boxing programmes are part of the wider global conversation on sustainable development.

Here's what Shelly had to say.

Across different regions, we see sport being used as a platform to engage young people in social change. From your experience, what makes sport and martial arts in particular such a powerful entry point to connect youth with the SDGs?

When a teacher, youth worker, or community leader who has no connection to the sport a young person does speaks to them about topics like education, decent work, or economic growth, those conversations can quickly become something they resent. The person in front of them feels distant, the topics feel imposed, and the whole thing feels too closely tied to a mainstream society they don't feel part of. Anything said in that setting is difficult for them to relate to, no matter how important the message is.

But place those same conversations inside a martial arts environment, led by someone who actually does the sport with them, and something shifts. There's a humbleness and grit to martial arts culture that resonates with young people who may have previously engaged in anti-social behaviour. When the person leading those conversations has also put the work in alongside them, they're no longer seen as another authority figure pushing an agenda. They're someone who has earned respect through the sport itself. That changes the dynamic entirely, and suddenly topics that once felt scary or irrelevant become something worth engaging with.

Boxing Is Love uses boxing not only as a sport but as a way to reconnect young people with education and social issues. How does linking sport with learning change the way young people engage with education?

A lot of young people grow up being labelled by parents, teachers, or peers as troublemakers or not academic. Over time that sticks, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where they disengage from education altogether.

What we try to show at Boxing Is Love is that education doesn't have to look or feel like mainstream school. We connect subjects like sociology, politics, media, economics, and history directly to boxing, something the young people are already invested in. Our sessions are split: 50 minutes boxing, 50 minutes classroom, with the same coach leading both. That builds trust and a genuine relationship, which makes young people far more open when it comes to learning.

We have young people learning about apartheid through Nelson Mandela's boxing, exploring economics through copyright disputes in boxing photography, and understanding history through Muhammad Ali's refusal to serve in the Vietnam War. Young people who once felt excluded from education start to feel encouraged to discuss and engage again.

Many grassroots initiatives are creating real change locally but remain underrepresented in global discussions on sustainable development. What needs to happen for these youth-driven initiatives to gain more recognition and support?

As cliche as it sounds, investing more time and care into your social media strategy. It's about telling the stories of the young people and communities you work with in a way that balances authenticity with an understanding of what actually performs well online.

Visibility is often the gateway. When stories are told well, they give media, local councils, and the wider public a real sense of your impact and why the work matters. From there, opportunities follow, whether that's partnerships, funding, or wider recognition. You never fully know what strong, consistent storytelling can open up. Looking ahead to 2030, what is one change you hope to see in how youth are engaged through sport for sustainable development?

More variety in what sport is paired with. I'd love to see sport combined with medical education and nutrition in communities that wouldn't normally have access, or something like running paired with conversations around sustainable cities and urban planning. The aim is for young people to see that there are different ways to engage with the issues that affect them, and that sport can be a starting point for understanding their future and the society they live in as something they have a real voice in shaping.