Areninhas and Rede Cuca: Analysis of Popular Participation in Public Sports and Leisure Policies in the City of Fortaleza/Ceará-Brazil

The study's main objective was to analyze popular participation in public sports and leisure policies in the city of Fortaleza/CE from 2018 to 2019. The sample categorization had a quantitative of 108 people, stratified between managers (8) and community participants (100) of social projects in sports equipment belonging to and under the managerial responsibility of the Secretariat for Sports and Leisure (Secel) and Municipal Secretariat for Youth (SMJ). The equipment investigated was the Areninhas, under the responsibility of Secel, and the Cucas, under the responsibility of the SMJ. The applied methodology had as a guiding parameter a field study, with a predominantly quantitative-qualitative data collection approach, via descriptive, exploratory, and observation analysis of the managers' speeches of the community; and legal 1 Revista Intercontinental de Gestão Desportiva - ISSN 2237-3373 ARTIGO ORIGINAL https://doi.org/10.51995/2237-3373.v13i3e110064 documents. In light of the literature, the triangulation of inventoried sources was considered through the interpretation and description of the collected data, with the statistical interpretation of the variables tabulated and analyzed frequently, descriptive analysis, percentage, mean, and standard deviation by SPSS 2020. The results found point to a mistake, on the part of managers, in the interpretation of what democratic participation is in the decisions of these municipal departments and their equipment, which justifies the need for training actions to value and implement popular participation in the areas of Sport and Leisure and define strategies for decentralizing decision-making power, to enhance the success of actions and guarantee compliance with the precepts of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil ( Brasil, 1988), which provides for access to Sport and Leisure as a social right.