For Education Commission, sharing knowledge is the key

The new FIG Education Commission, which held its very first meeting at the Federation’s headquarters in Lausanne June 15-16, looked into areas from A to Z that can be included in the field of development for helping and supporting athletes, judges and coaches.

“It was really active one and half days that we had here. It was a good a start and now we need to build on this,” commented Jani Tanskanen, President of the Education Commission, at the end of the meeting.

The Commission, also composed of Youssef Altabbaa, Marco Bortoleto, Jevgenijs Sapronenko, Tseko Mogotsi and joined by Education Director Hardy Fink, started by reviewing all existing material and programmes offered by the FIG.

“It is amazing the amount of things that we already do and have done and the projects that are going on,” said Tanskanen. “We feel that we can achieve a lot quickly by simply promoting the existing material, because we have good quality videos and manuals.”

Among the most successful programmes from the FIG are the Academies. This coach education programme, led by Hardy Fink since its launch in 2002, has been contributing to spreading the message of safe, healthy and systemic training of gymnasts worldwide, with a total of 268 events to date across all five continents. The Education Commission explored ways of developing the Academies further and considered an e-learning system as one of the solutions.

Coming from the Athletes Commission, the 1997 Horizontal Bar World Champion fully understands the impact of Education on the development of Gymnastics worldwide. The FIG can always do more but the first goal is to encourage cooperation. “We have a vast amount of knowledge in different areas at our member federations and within the Federation and I think the question is more how to share it with each other, and then that will allow us to grow our support,” he stressed.

Tanskanen will present the commission’s ideas to FIG President Morinari Watanabe and the Executive Committee in Vestfold, Norway, at the end of July.