Highlighting inclusion at Community Coaches Day

The 2019 Sport Leadership sportif Conference is this weekend and we could not be more excited, particularly for Community Coaches Day. This is a unique professional development opportunity to bring our coaches together for a day of learning and building connections, things that help strengthen the coaching community throughout B.C.

To kick off the weekend, CAAWS, viaSport and ProMOTION Plus hosted the sector in a conversation on the importance of gender equity in sport.

We are especially proud that this year, 55 per cent of our registered participants are women coaches. With inclusion and gender equity as key priorities on the road to a stronger sport sector, this number is a crucial measure of female presence in the coaching system. More importantly, it is an indication that despite being underrepresented in the field of coaching, women coaches in B.C. are seeking opportunities for development to improve overall coaching performance at disproportionate rates. This is worth celebrating, as much of the research we have conducted points to the importance of female involvement and leadership in sport, and as such we have focused our efforts at promoting development opportunities like this one to female coaches.

As a point of contact for both athletes and sport organizations, coaches are an integral channel through which positive change can be made. We also know that high quality sport experiences are near impossible without high quality coaches, so we count this increasing diversity at the front lines as a win for sport in B.C.

Community Coaches Day will feature a variety of workshops and NCCP courses that coaches have chosen to participate in. This year, for the first time, we are excited to offer viaSport’s own inclusion training, All Youth Matter. This new program is designed to help leaders make their sport and recreation experiences more inclusive, welcoming and safe for youth, especially youth who are underserved. We are so pleased this workshop will have sign language interpreters, furthering the spirit of inclusion and accessibility that we are striving to build into the sport sector. In addition, there will be great representation from disability sport, with 16 DSOs already registered.

If you’re one of the lucky coaches attending Community Coaches Day, we encourage you to connect with one another and enrich your knowledge with the wealth of different perspectives from other leaders across all sports and organizations.

We can’t wait to see you all there.