Sainimili Saukuru (Left) Former Fiji national volleyball player and coach, and immediate past Head of ONOC's OSEP programme, turned Personal Coach talked with Kayla Whitelock, New Zealand multiple-Olympian hockey player who was singled out as an outstanding role model for Oceania athletes at the 5th Oceania Athletes' Forum. | Photo: ONOC
Personal growth is critically important for all athletes as they pursue a combination of sports, education, and employment commitments.
Athletes’ representatives at the 5thOceania Athletes’ Forum learned about ‘Taking intentional steps to growth’ from Kingdom Personal Coach, Sainimili Saukuru, the former Coordinator of ONOC’s flagship Oceania Sport Education Programme (OSEP).
This component of the programme was designed on the premise that athletes can be better prepared to work and lead as part of their National Olympic Committee (NOC) Athletes’ Commissions if they practised intentional personal growth at the individual level – that the practise of personal management and leadership leading to intentional growth is a prerequisite for those able to perform the same at an NOC Athletes’ Commission level. The ‘you cannot give what you do not have’ principle.
The keynote session involved: identification of Growth Gap Traps, a self-assessment of accidental versus intentional growth, assessment of personal environments (people, places, and events), and the identification of potential mentors and coaches at individual level.
The Take-Home Challenge was to submit a one-page Personal Growth Plan covering a month, half a year, and an annual plan.
Francis Manioru (SOL) discusses Games, the ONOC BRISBANE 2032 Programme, and items important for the new NOC Athletes' Commission members will be stepping into and inheriting for the future.
In the Communications and Media Training component, athlete representatives were pre-engaged in a Communications Activation Exercise responding to daily creative challenges using visual, audio visual and written content creation and posting on social media. These were used as signposts to the final in-person training which was condensed from a one-day line training to a one-and-a-half-hour session.
The session covered NOC AC Communication needs, solutions, and a rapid simulation in media production and engagement.
The overall takeaway from the training were the following: that the Oceania Athletes’ Forum Outcomes Statement which was a result of athletes’ collective deliberations, was a guide to creating and finalising individual NOC AC Action Plans, it is an overall statement from which Action Items at continental level and national level are extracted from to be shared with all attendees, and that it then becomes a monitoring mechanism for actions NOC ACs choose to prioritise on ground.
Dirngulbai Misech shares from her experience at the 5th Oceania Athletes' Commission and on the opportunities available to Pacific Island athletes.
Given the variances in NOC AC communications capacity, ONOC Communications as part of its support to the Chair of the ONOC Athletes’ Commission will create a Communications Toolbox for athletes and their commissions to be made available on the ONOC AC website at www.ac.oceanianoc.org
The Toolbox will contain among other things, templates for communications in a Pacific cultural context, basic photography and video, media engagement, NOC and wider Olympic Movement engagement, communication strategy and plans, social media activation plans, communications policies and procedures, advocacy design and implementation, data collection and management for NOC ACs, and small event management.
To link to the other two days of the 5th Oceania Athletes’ Forum:
Athletes’ Voices – Oceania | Day One Wrap
Athletes’ Voices – Oceania | Day Two Wrap
A final Special Wrap of the Forum including the ONOC AC Elections, the Outcomes Statement, and the extraction of Action Items, and a Message from ONOC President Robin Mitchell will end this series.
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For the Oceania National Olympic Committees
For the ONOC Athletes’ Commission
For the ONOCAthletes’ Commission Microsite
For the IOC Athletes’ Commission
For the Athlete365hub of resources for all athletes
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