Local sports administrators are being trained to manage Olympic sports organizations by the Barbados Olympic Association Inc.’s Olympic Academy.
Joanna Zipser-Graves, Head of NOC Management Programmes of Olympic Solidarity, launched the third version of the six-month Advanced Sports Management course last Saturday.
Olympic Solidarity is the funding agency for the International Olympic Committee. It provides guidance and support, and also scrutinizes the activities of National Olympic Committees (NOC), to ensure they conform to the Olympic Statutes and the Olympic Charter.
Zipser-Graves, who was in Barbados to head the recently concluded Olympic Solidarity Forum at the Hilton Resort, said that she was delighted to see the high level of interest and participation in the programme which is geared at developing the management competency of NOCs.
“The Advanced Sports Management Course is designed as a go between program towards the Executive Masters in Sports Organization Management. Olympic Solidarity recognized that there was a gap in the knowledge of NOCs in organizing events, and this course was designed to fill this gap. The course material is based on real cases so that the learning is quite practical. The course is also structured for participants to learn from each other,” Zipser-Graves said.
Manager at the Olympic Academy, Dave Farmer said that participants will all work on individual projects, but the overall course will be very interactive. “One of the strengths of this course is the concept of “collective learning” and we try to encourage participants to get involved, as opposed to sitting back and expecting a hand-out of knowledge.”
Twenty-four participants from 19 organizations are registered in the course. It has six modules: Organsing an Olympic Sport Organisation, Managing Strategically, Managing Human Resources, Managing Finance, Managing Marketing and Organising a Major Sport Event.
