This article examines grassroots skateboarding initiatives in Morocco to explore how locally embedded sport communities contribute to rethinking knowledge production and power relations within the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) field. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within a local informal skateboarding community organization, the study analyzes how grassroots actors navigate material constraints, spatial governance, institutional dynamics, and gendered participation through locally situated practices. The findings show that many outcomes commonly attributed to SDP programs – such as youth engagement, community building, and inclusive participation – are already produced through informal, community-driven sports initiatives. By centering these practices, the article challenges dominant SDP approaches that privilege formal organizations and externally designed interventions. Through postcolonial and Orientalist critiques, it argues that grassroots initiatives generate situated knowledge that disrupts deficit-based representations of Global South communities while revealing the broader power structures shaping sports and development. At the same time, the study highlights the ambivalent positioning of grassroots actors within processes of “inclusive neoliberalism,” where local agency both navigates and reproduces global inequalities. The article concludes by advocating for a reorientation of SDP research and practice toward grassroots knowledge, context-sensitive engagement, and non-interventionist forms of transnational support.

Routine monitoring data are an underused but important source of insight into large-scale, real-world program implementation. Three years into implementing its mental health programme called MindSKILLZ, Grassroot Soccer, an adolescent health organization, initiated a multi-country analysis of its routine monitoring data to: 1) examine MindSKILLZ effects overall, by mental health construct, country, delivery method, and participant characteristics; and 2) gather feedback from experts and youth on the MindSKILLZ pre-post questionnaire to improve its design. Pre-post questionnaire data from 2,286 participants in Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe were analyzed. Results demonstrate statistically significant improvements across countries. Program participants showed substantial gains in stigma reduction (+44.8%), help-seeking (+43.6%), and mental health knowledge (+34.2%). Clinically meaningful improvements in mental well-being were observed in Zimbabwe (+16 points), alongside positive change in Zambia (+6 points). Feedback from experts and youth highlighted challenges with the pre-post questionnaire (e.g., youth comprehension), prompting pre-post tool revisions. Findings demonstrate the value of routine monitoring data for identifying trends in program outcomes and guiding ongoing program improvement. Research studies are needed to establish causal impacts of programming.