The Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit founded in 1949 that works toward a free, just, and equitable society through dialogue, leadership, and action on challenges facing the United States and the world.
Pope Leo XIV’s AI Encyclical Ties Safety Rules to Human Dignity
A panel convened by Aspen Digital treated Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnificent Humanity, as an authoritative Catholic intervention in AI governance rather than a narrowly theological text. Kim Daniels, Vilas Dhar, and Josh Good argued that the document judges AI by its effects on human dignity, especially for workers, students, creative professionals, and vulnerable communities, while pointing to safety regulation, retraining, and education as practical tests. The unresolved problem, Daniels said, is whether the Church can move that teaching from Rome into parishes, civic institutions, classrooms, and technology work.
AZ Plays Aims to Close Arizona’s Youth Team Sports Participation Gap
Boys & Girls Clubs of the Valley announced AZ Plays, a Phoenix effort tied to the Aspen Institute’s Project Play, to study and expand youth-sports access across schools and local partners. Marcia Mintz framed the work as a push to understand and lift up youth sports in the Valley, while Larry Fitzgerald said the urgency is Arizona’s near-bottom national ranking in team-sports participation. Fitzgerald and other speakers argued that access to play is not only a sports issue, but a route to mentorship, discipline, confidence, and leadership for children.
Work Alone Leaves 42% of U.S. Households Below Survival Budgets
Stephanie Hoopes of United For ALICE said 42% of U.S. households were below the group’s conservative survival threshold in 2023, including many families above the federal poverty line but unable to cover basic costs. In a May 2026 discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program and United For ALICE, speakers argued that this makes hardship among working households a job-quality and affordability problem, not simply a poverty problem. They presented ALICE at Work as an employer-focused effort to use local data and peer cohorts to change the workplace practices that affect income, costs, stability, and advancement.
ESPN Opens $10,000 Grant Round for Youth Sports Innovation
ESPN’s Jennifer Paulett used the Project Play Summit 2026 to frame Take Back Sports as a participation-first youth sports initiative, arguing that the goal is more children playing in safe, positive environments rather than a pipeline for elite athletes. Paulett said ESPN and Disney will open a second round of the Take Back Sports Innovation Challenge, offering $10,000 grants to summit organizations with 30 days to apply.
Youth Sports Campaign Targets Coach Training to Reduce Early Dropout
DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation and GameChanger are using their Most Valuable Coach announcement to argue that youth sports retention depends heavily on the adults leading teams. Rick Jordan of the foundation and Rebecca Wasserman of GameChanger frame the campaign around a coaching gap: children are more likely to keep playing when coaches are trained to create safe, predictable and supportive environments. The effort positions healing-centered coaching as practical sideline behavior, not therapy, with resources aimed at volunteer coaches who shape whether children stay in the game.
U.S. Soccer Plans School-Based Push to Close Youth Access Gaps
Project Play’s national roundtable members argued that raising youth sports participation to 63% by 2030 will require schools and after-school programs to become a larger delivery system, not simply more club recruitment. Lex Chalat of U.S. Soccer’s Soccer Forward Foundation positioned Soccer at Schools as a legacy strategy tied to the 2026 World Cup, LA28 and the Women’s World Cup, while Bank of America’s Cindy Nguyen Thomas and Massachusetts Youth Soccer’s Rob Holliday described corporate, state and local roles in turning national attention into affordable access.
63x30 Adds Community Sports Model Reaching 600,000 Children a Year
Project Play’s 63x30 discussion on communities presents Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Buffalo Wild Wings’ All-Stars partnership as a scalable way to make youth sports accessible beyond schools and pay-to-play systems. Jim Clark of BGCA and Stuart Brown of the Inspire Brands Foundation argue that long-term funding for uniforms, equipment, trained staff and league costs can turn community clubs into reliable sports settings for hundreds of thousands of children, with benefits they tie to physical health, mental health and broader youth development.
Champion Athletes Can Open Doors, but Students Must Lead
Tim Brown, the Heisman Trophy winner and Pro Football Hall of Famer, argues that athlete leadership matters only when it is close enough for young people to trust and carry themselves. In a conversation moderated by Binta Niambi Brown, he makes the case that high-profile athletes can serve as mentors and resources, but lasting youth leadership has to be built inside schools, teams, and neighborhoods rather than delivered from outside. His examples—from his mother, Howie Long, Lou Holtz, and current college football—frame leadership as structure, belief, presence, and transmission.
Youth Sports Participation Rebounds, but 63% Goal Requires System Change
At an Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program session on the 63x30 challenge, Ashleigh Huffman said youth sports participation has rebounded from its COVID-era low but remains constrained by a system built to “weed folks out.” Rick Jordan of the DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation and Steve Tanner of PGA of America argued that reaching 63% participation by 2030 will require more than new programs: longer community investments, coordinated sport pathways, practical access to facilities and equipment, and coaches who make children want to return.
The Athlete-Artist Divide Narrows Youth Development Too Early
LJ Rader, founder of Art But Make It Sports, argues that children are pushed too early to choose between identities such as athlete and artist, and lose developmental range in the process. In a conversation moderated by LACMA curator Britt Salvesen, Rader uses his art-and-sports image pairings to make the case that both fields train attention, emotion, improvisation and tolerance for beginnerhood. Their shared point is practical rather than romantic: young people benefit when they are allowed to keep playing across more than one kind of practice.
Youth Sports Safety Reform Needs National Standards and Dedicated Funding
At Project Play Summit 2026, Benita Fitzgerald-Mosley of the U.S. Center for SafeSport and Seth Lieberman of Ankored argued that youth sports safety has become a governance problem as much as a cultural one. Parents increasingly expect background checks, abuse-prevention training and injury safeguards, but the speakers said today’s system is fragmented, underfunded and outside SafeSport’s reach for much of grassroots sport. The reform case is for common standards, portable credentials, dedicated funding and a stronger central safety infrastructure by 2028.
Youth Sports Have Proven ACL Prevention Tools but Rarely Use Them
Aspen Institute moderator Vince Minjares and sports-medicine physicians Cindy Chang and Ryan Lingor argue that youth sports already have proven tools to reduce many ACL injuries, but schools, clubs and leagues are not using them consistently. Drawing on the National ACL Injury Coalition’s work with Hospital for Special Surgery, they frame the problem as an implementation failure: neuromuscular training, strength work and better movement development need to be built into ordinary practice, especially for girls in cutting and landing sports.
Student Captains Are Turning Team Leadership Into Civic Advocacy
At a Heisman Foundation discussion moderated by CEO Jeff Price, high school captains Guywintz Jules, Ma’Net Richardson and Carol Yan argued that student-athlete leadership already extends beyond team performance into civic work. They described captaincy as a way to identify needs, press adults for resources and create access, whether through a Salem youth commission, advocacy for a first-year flag football team or a student-run golf program. The case they made for future leadership development was practical: give young captains mentors and access, but do not take the work out of their hands.
Youth Sport Reform Is Shifting From Programs to Children’s Rights Standards
Tom Farrey of the Aspen Institute, USA Volleyball chair Cassidy Lichtman, and Deloitte’s Mariam Mansury argue that U.S. youth sport needs new defaults, not just new programs. Using Norway’s child-first sport system, USA Volleyball’s development work, and city adoption of the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports, they make the case for treating youth sport as an ecosystem governed by minimum standards around access, safety, coaching quality, developmentally appropriate play, and joy.
Youth Sports AI Needs Guardrails Before Children Become Data Points
Zarif Haque of The Good Game, Travis Roache, author of Coaching in the Age of AI, and Calli Schroeder of the Electronic Privacy Information Center argue that AI can widen access to coaching and reduce administrative burdens in youth sports, but only if adults keep it subordinate to human judgment. Their central warning is that tools built to track, rank, or predict children can turn play into surveillance and optimization, undermining privacy, development, and the human relationships that make youth sports worth protecting.
Boys Still Want Sports, but the Participation Supply Has Shrunk
The Aspen Institute and the American Institute for Boys and Men argue that declining or stagnant boys’ sports participation is not mainly a demand problem: boys still want to play, but too many are shut out by narrow team models, early specialization, performance pressure and underprepared adult support. Alanna Williams and Zach Moo Young frame the policy response as expanding the supply of lower-pressure, developmentally appropriate opportunities without reducing girls’ access. Charlie Ward adds a coach’s case for flexibility, arguing that programs need to make room for boys whose contributions do not fit standard roster logic.
A $40 Billion Youth Sports Market Lacks Basic Child Safeguards
Tom Farrey of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program argues that youth sports need a basic governance layer if they are to deliver on their civic and developmental promise. In a conversation moderated by Chuck Todd, Farrey makes the case for registration, safety standards, abuse reporting, school-based support and a children’s rights framework, while Todd frames youth sports as one of the few remaining local institutions that still brings divided communities together. Their shared premise is that more participation is not enough if the system remains privatized, fragmented and weakly accountable.
Private Capital’s Youth-Sports Promise Depends on Local Access and Accountability
Private capital can make youth sports more local and accessible only if it is tied to participation, data rights and enforceable standards, according to Jay Adya of Elysian Park Ventures; Katherine Van Dyck of the American Economic Liberties Project argues that the same investment machinery can just as easily produce lock-in and extraction. Their dispute turns on whether league partnerships and better-designed business models can discipline investors, or whether youth sports needs antitrust enforcement and legal accountability to prevent profit-driven systems from capturing families.
Heisman Backs National Leadership Academy for High School Team Captains
Dan Reed, chair of the Heisman Foundation, announced the Aspen Institute’s Captains Leadership Academy as a national effort to turn high school sports captains into broader civic leaders. Reed said Heisman is making the largest single grant in its history as founding partner, arguing that students already chosen to lead teams can be trained, mentored and supported to lead in schools and communities. Pete Weber of the Aspen Institute placed the academy within a wider push to expand youth leadership development, with IMG Academy also named as a partner.
Boston’s Youth Sports Gap Is Coordination, Not Just Cost
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu argues that building a “city of champions” depends less on Boston’s sports culture than on making youth sports easier for families to find, join, and sustain. In a conversation with Joon Lee, Wu says the city’s role is to coordinate a fragmented network of schools, parks, nonprofits, volunteers, professional teams, and facilities so that cost, information, transportation, registration, and maintenance do not determine which children get to play.
Cost, Transit, and Field Shortages Limit Youth Soccer Access
A new Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program report on youth soccer in New York and New Jersey, discussed by Tom Farrey and philanthropist Laurie Tisch, argues that the region’s central problem is not children’s interest in the game but unequal access to it. Farrey said the report points to cost, transportation, field shortages and gender gaps as the barriers shaping who gets to play, while Tisch said the findings give her philanthropy a roadmap for a $10mn push into local soccer programs, fields and support for girls’ participation.
Twenty Organizations and Schools Named 2026 Project Play Champions
Molly Kaye, Nickelodeon’s senior public affairs manager, used an Aspen Institute Project Play Summit announcement to name 20 organizations and schools as the 2026 Project Play Champions cohort, powered by Nickelodeon Our World. Kaye framed the recognition as a commitment to youth sports that are not only safer and more inclusive, but shaped by children themselves, arguing that kids build agency when they are trusted to choose, collaborate, lead and be heard.
Girls’ Sports Gains Depend on Systems That Prevent Female Athlete Injuries
Kate Ackerman, co-founder and director of the Women’s Health, Sports & Performance Institute, argues that expanding girls’ access to sport is insufficient if the systems around them are not built to keep them healthy. In her Play Talk presentation, she says injury prevention, trained coaches, appropriate medical support, nutrition and mental health resources, and faster translation of female-specific research are prerequisites for girls and women to receive the lifelong benefits sports can offer.
Nasal Breathing Gives Coaches a Practical Tool for Stress Regulation
Chi Kim, CEO of Pure Edge Inc., argues that nasal breathing gives coaches and adults around teams a simple way to recognize and regulate stress before it shapes attention, decision-making, and behavior. In her talk, she links pressure to a narrowing of physiological and cognitive capacity, then presents counted breathing through the nose as a route back toward parasympathetic activation and steadier presence. Her point is deliberately practical: before correcting an athlete or reacting to a play, adults should manage the state they bring into the team environment.