Beyond the Olympic Games: Lessons in Engagement and Belonging

It’s a scorching hot morning in August 2013 in Rio de Janeiro. Public school teachers are on strike. Classrooms across the city are empty. Yet, at the headquarters of the Organizing Committee for the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a large group of these very same teachers gather in the auditorium, eager to spend the day working with our team on Transforma, the education program for the Summer Games that year. 

The purpose of the Transforma program was to leverage the themes and values of the Olympics to create opportunities for social-emotional learning and to introduce new physical education activities in schools. None of us knew just how far the educational program would go. As engagement general manager and head of education, respectively, we were working with a very meager budget, little internal support, and almost no visibility outside the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee (a nonprofit separate from the International Olympic Committee and the government). The challenge before us was not only to create educational opportunities, but also to figure out how the Olympic and Paralympic Games could become something meaningful for students and teachers across Brazil.

At the time, Brazil's education challenges were vast—low test scores on basic skills, students significantly behind their expected grade level, and high rates of functional illiteracy. We knew we were not going to move the needle on math or literacy scores. But we could use sport—and the extraordinary energy the Games inspired—as a vehicle for learning, to foster the values at the very heart of the Olympic and Paralympic movements. 

At the same time, obesity, sedentary behavior, and screen dependency were on the rise. Physical education in public schools was largely confined to football, volleyball, basketball, and handball. Children who didn't connect with those sports were disengaged. Through classes, coaching sessions, and sports festivals, we set out to change that and help more children find a meaningful relationship with movement and the positive values sports can instill.

In spite of the systemic obstacles, our Transforma program would go on to reach millions of young people across Brazil, from elementary through high school. Along the way we learned how to mobilize people across organizations and build credibility, visibility, and support from the ground up to expand the reach of the program. These lessons extend far beyond the Olympic and Paralympic Games; they apply to anyone seeking to create a movement and scale its impact to complex environments.

A Challenging Backdrop 

The production of the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games itself was nothing short of extraordinary. They were the first Games staged in South America and brought challenges far more complex than those typically faced by host nations with more stable political environments and stronger economies. Resource constraints, infrastructure limitations, and countless other obstacles plagued the event from the outset. These issues were compounded by an economic recession, a presidential impeachment, and widespread political protests in the lead-up to the Games, fueling concerns about whether Brazil could deliver an event of this scale and raising questions about whether the costs were justified. 

Against this backdrop, the Rio 2016 organization was under relentless scrutiny, with international media focusing on the Zika virus, construction delays, water quality for some of the aquatic sports, political instability, and a slew of other issues. Caution was understandable because, despite the education program being a contractual obligation with the International Olympic Committee, it was not mission-critical to the operational success of the Games. A program that went wrong, especially one involving children, was a liability no one needed. The brief we received was sparse: deliver a modest initiative that would check the box—a small, local program that could operate quietly in the background, with minimal budget and support.

For us, that was a betrayal of the moment's potential. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leverage the magnetism of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and impact children's lives nationwide. It was the potential to scale up that energized us; and with four years ahead, we believed far more was possible than what was set out in that initial brief in 2012. 

Our technical objectives were clear: encourage social and emotional learning and broaden the range of sports offered in schools. But our real work resided in what Ronald Heifetz, professor/lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, calls the “adaptive challenges”—problems that require experimentation, adjustment, and shifts in paradigms. We had no formal authority to mandate participation from teachers, schools, education departments, or the Ministry of Education. Our budget fell woefully short of what our vision demanded, and we operated with little institutional support inside a risk-averse organization whose primary focus was delivering the Games.

Our main adaptive challenge was, thus, to understand how to mobilize people at every level—from institutional partners whose resources we depended on, to the individual teachers who would bring the program into classrooms—when participation was entirely voluntary.

Fifteen Pilot Schools

Before designing anything, we set out to answer a central question: How do you mobilize teachers who feel underpaid and overextended? We held preliminary workshops to listen to physical education teachers, pedagogical coordinators, and school principals from fifteen pilot schools in Rio de Janeiro. What were they struggling with? What did they dream of for themselves and their students? What would it actually take to make our initiative worth their time?

We had gone in believing physical education teachers would be the primary drivers of the program. We quickly discovered they often lacked the institutional leverage to do so. Pedagogical coordinators, on the other hand, had influence over curriculum integration and could act as a critical bridge to the wider teaching staff, weaving Olympic and Paralympic themes into mathematics, geography, history, chemistry, and other subjects.

With these insights, we designed a program built around three core groups as entry points to schools—pedagogical coordinators, physical education teachers, and young leaders. Every decision was created and validated with teachers and pedagogical coordinators from the fifteen pilot schools in Rio. We continued working with this same group throughout the project, using them as a constant feedback loop to develop new content and expand program offerings. The content we developed was flexible enough to work across varied school contexts in Brazil; this ensured the initiative was built with teachers, for teachers, and grounded in the realities of their day-to-day work. 

Student Leaders

As we ramped up activities, we began involving young leaders—students selected by their schools to carry the program forward. Their commitment and importance to the program were evident from the very first gathering.

It’s a Saturday morning in Rio in 2014. Buses pull up outside a school in the Tijuca neighborhood and 340 student leaders from fifty-two different schools spill out—teenagers from different corners of a city that does not always feel like a single place.

The path leading into the school is painted with bright red running lanes, echoing the track of an Olympic stadium. Students follow it forward into a normally drab auditorium that has been transformed into an Olympic wonderland. Bold Rio 2016 colors burst from every surface, and banners ripple with the swirling energy of excited students. Welcoming them from the stage is a facilitator in full costume portraying Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic movement. The atmosphere is electric with anticipation. Before the students take their seats, each one is handed a T-shirt printed with the Rio 2016 logo and one of the Olympic or Paralympic values, such as friendship, respect, excellence, determination. As they pull the shirts over their heads, a new kind of energy emerges. By the end of the day, they’ve morphed into ambassadors for our program. 

As one fourteen-year-old explained:

"Because the Transforma project is not just for one part of the school. It's for the whole school. It won't be just about sport, it will be about the students' school life. We're going to talk about different topics like bullying, the school experience, diversity at school. We'll take it all within one theme, which is the Olympic Games."

One of the eighty-two teachers we had trained to mentor this group told us, "You can see [the students'] desire to participate. The pleasure they get out of it. Out of feeling useful. They're thinking, 'I'm going to take what I'm learning, something special, to special people, my classmates.'"

By treating emotional contagion, joy, and belonging as design principles, we intentionally created the conditions for this sense of possibility and excitement. We had understood early on that, for a voluntary program to scale up, technical and pedagogical excellence would have to go hand-in-hand with infectious energy and play. 

Everything in Transforma carried this spirit. From the materials and training sessions we produced to the gatherings we convened, and the way we interacted with the different stakeholders—it was all meant to create a sense of being part of something special. Something worth belonging to and spreading.  

It was during this phase that the program began gaining traction inside the Rio 2016 organization. When the chief operating officer of the Games visited one of the pilot schools through the staff volunteer program we had created—an internal initiative that brought Rio 2016 employees into schools so they could experience the program firsthand—he joined students in deep discussions, using moments of Olympic and Paralympic sportsmanship to help them reflect on their own experiences and choices. He was struck by what the program was unlocking and recognized that far from posing any reputational risk, it carried significant positive media potential. That visit marked a turning point in the institutional support we received.

The contagious energy created in these moments and the opportunity to be part of something larger than ourselves propelled us forward as a team and helped draw in more and more stakeholders to the project.  

Ministry of Education

Once we had successfully expanded the program throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro, we felt ready to seek national expansion. National scale meant navigating broader institutional relationships. We had learned from past failure in this area. Months of conversations with the Ministry of Sports had gone nowhere. In hindsight we realized it was because we had arrived with our agenda rather than trying to figure out how to advance theirs.

When we approached the Ministry of Education, we took a different tack. Their online training platform reached teachers across the country, but it had nothing specific for physical education, and nothing tied to the two sporting events Brazil was about to host. The 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Games were generating extraordinary public interest, and that energy was going entirely untapped in schools. We offered to change that by creating free online training courses for physical education teachers, pedagogical coordinators, and the mentors supporting our young leaders program. For the education minister, saying yes meant he’d gain a highly visible national initiative aligned with existing policy priorities, particularly the socio-emotional competencies already recognized within the national education framework, delivered at no extra cost. For us, it meant instant access to an existing platform and a nationwide teacher base that would have taken years and costly resources to build independently.

But buy-in from the Ministry of Education was only half the equation. Because participation was voluntary, we had to create something teachers would actually want to participate in. During our initial work with the pilot schools, we had learned that many teachers felt professionally isolated: unseen, unsupported, and with few opportunities for growth and connection. We set out to change that.

In order to do so, we needed the help of the sports federations—the governing bodies responsible for each sport. Promoting badminton, archery, table tennis, and other lesser-known sports in a country where football is king was a challenge, and we needed their expertise and credibility to make the courses meaningful and high-quality. In return, through our partnership with the Ministry of Education, we could offer the federations something they had never previously been able to access: a direct pipeline into schools on a national scale, and with it, a new generation of potential athletes and fans.

Teachers who completed the courses received a certificate issued by all three partners—Rio 2016, the Ministry of Education, and the relevant sports federations. The effect on professional identity was significant. For many teachers, this was a big deal because it was the first time someone had invested in their growth since they graduated from college. They felt seen and valued. One teacher told us it felt like having "NASA" on his CV. Another said it was the first time in his career that anyone had treated him as a professional with potential and expertise to offer, rather than a body filling a teaching slot. Because it was backed by respected institutions, the certification carried weight beyond the school system and opened doors for teachers to work in sports clubs, community centers, and personal training sessions, creating pathways to additional income. 

Going Viral

We understood that the program would scale through social contagion, so it was important to instill a sense of ownership in teachers. Engaged and enthusiastic teachers would be the ones who would act as multipliers, helping to bring their peers on board and taking the program to their students. With this in mind, we built an online community for their use—a Facebook group where teachers could interact, a dedicated space on the Transforma website where we showcased their work, and, whenever possible, visibility in the media. 

These online spaces were built to counter the isolation teachers had described, to foster a sense of belonging, and to keep energy and participation levels high. They gave teachers a way to connect with peers across the nation, share how they were using the program in their schools, and draw inspiration from others facing similar realities and constraints. When teachers adapted or expanded what we offered, we gave them visibility. 

After one of our early in-person gatherings, a physical education teacher, inspired by the day’s activities, designed an indoor sports circuit that could be implemented on a single school court or playground, without specialized equipment. It was practical, replicable, and grounded in the reality most schools in Brazil faced: limited sports facilities and equipment. The teacher filmed a simple tutorial. The video began circulating through teacher networks, reaching schools in remote areas of Brazil. In recognition of his contribution to the program, that teacher carried the Rio 2016 Olympic torch years later.

We wanted teachers to feel that support was always available and that Transforma was a consistent presence in their professional lives, not just at one-off events. Years before the explosion of chatbots and avatars, we created a persona for the program, called “Edu Transforma.” Rather than interacting with an impersonal program account, teachers interacted with Edu Transforma, who remembered what they had done and acknowledged their progress. They exchanged messages with this persona directly and referred to him by name. It was a small design decision with an outsized relational effect that helped sustain a connection with thousands of participants across a sprawling, decentralized program.

The program eventually reached such institutional depth that in the state of Minas Gerais (with the largest school population in Brazil), teachers began seeing messages on their pay stubs: "Have you done your Transforma course today? Have you taken the Olympics to your school?" The fact that an education department chose to integrate these prompts into payroll communication was a signal that the program had moved from a contractual checkbox to systemic adoption.

Game Time

By the time the 2016 Rio Games arrived, thousands of teachers across Brazil had engaged with the content, connected with peers, adapted ideas to their own contexts, and innovated in ways we hadn’t imagined possible. It was the result of designing for the community, allowing for ownership, and building a culture that recognized and celebrated teacher and student leader initiative. The curriculum flourished in creative ways, for example:

In a mathematics classroom, students sit at tables covered with data from the Olympic Games. Their teacher, Glória, has printed out medal counts, athlete statistics, and performance times. Students look at how Brazil's results changed over four years, calculating averages of sprinters' times, applying addition and subtraction with positive and negative numbers to track team scores, and creating symmetrical drawings of Olympic moments on grid paper.

In the gym, a physical education teacher has laid out an improvised obstacle course: rolled newspapers serving as batons for relay races, plastic bottles as markers, bamboo poles for high jump, old socks stuffed with sand as shot-put balls. Students sprint through the circuit, learning to throw using PVC pipe and cardboard structures they helped build.

In a classroom, a teacher poses a challenge: use LEGOs to build an Olympic sport. Working in groups, students construct detailed models, a miniature volleyball court with accurate proportions, a track complete with staggered starting lines, a gymnastics apparatus. As they build, they discuss angles, dimensions, and proportions. When complete, each model is displayed in a school gallery where other students can hold, manipulate, and understand the design choices that make it possible.

The Potential of Sports

We built this program under adverse conditions. No meaningful budget. No formal authority over any of the people we needed. A risk-averse Rio 2016 organization that wanted us to do less. A political environment so volatile that five ministers passed through the Ministry of Education during the years we operated. And yet, we always believed that it was possible to do something big with this moment because sport is a universal language. It commands extraordinary attention and emotional connection.

Sport has the power to transcend boundaries, bring people together, and remind us of our common humanity. We saw this happen at the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup that just wrapped up in the United States, Mexico and Canada. The unbridled energy that builds around global sporting events quickly fizzles once the final whistle blows, but with deliberate design it can be carried across the years between events and inspire positive social change. 

The question now is: How can the momentum generated by the 2026 World Cup be used on the road to the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil? And how can that energy be sustained until the FIFA 2031 Women’s World Cup, cohosted by the US, Mexico, Jamaica, and Costa Rica? The latter will be the largest women-centered event ever staged, with an expected viewership in the billions, making it one of the greatest shared experiences on the planet. There is opportunity and enough time to use this event as a catalyst for something much larger than sport. What if the tournament became a culture-defining movement? What if the years leading up to it were deliberately designed to foster female excellence and leadership, bringing together women athletes, heads of state, CEOs, scientists, and artists together so that young girls could see themselves reflected on and off the pitch?

Every major sporting event, championship, league, club, and team is sitting on unrealized potential to convert attention, fandom, and iconic moments into lasting impact. And as we have shown, it doesn't take a massive budget or formal authority to unlock it. It takes using the magnetic power of sport to intentionally build something worth belonging to. The greatest potential for global sport lies beyond the field of play, in what happens when people from  different backgrounds and beliefs become part of a shared experience.

Contributing Bios

Both authors were 2024–2025 Fellows in the Global Sports Initiative, part of the (newly renamed) Project on Global History.

Mariana Behr Andrade has served as an advisor on four Olympic Games. She works with sports organizations to create new forms of participation and fan engagement around major events, leagues, and teams.

Vanderson Berbat is a senior public policy consultant who works on promoting equity and inclusion in educational programs and partnerships.