The EuroHockey Solidarity through Great Governance (SGG) project began in earnest with lead-off meetings to partners in Türkiye, Croatia, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
The SGG project is a two-year pilot programme for developing organisational strategies of member national associations linked to their national Olympic committee and ministry of sport strategic objectives.
Through this initial phase of the Erasmus+ supported project, EuroHockey will focus on the future development of the SGG strategy with the target to create a pilot scheme to enable clear, costed and scheduled plans for the strategies of each national association.
Via these visits, EuroHockey Head of Strategy and Development Tom Pedersen-Smith and Oaks Consultancy’s Phil Taylor are collecting key information on the state of play of member national associations and their approach to delivering data backed strategies and decisions/outcomes.
This will, in turn, be analysed to collate into a research report with the goal of forming six pilot programmes for national associations, to attain an understanding of needs and the complexities of attaining strategic resources in their country.
In Türkiye, they were welcomed by Türkiye Hockey’s Gizem Karaali Karadag (Director of International Relations) and Ahmet Onur Albunar (Secretary General) at a meeting at the Turkish sports ministry who were represented by Veli Ozan Çakır (Vice General Manager), Nilufer Bircan and Serkan Ucel (Youth and Sports Expert).
In Zagreb, the EuroHockey delegation were greeted by Croatian Hockey’s Slaven Zlatar CHF (Director), Renata Gregurek (CHF Executive Board) and Igor Capan (CHF General Secretary).
They engaged with the Croatian National Olympic Committee, namely Hrvoje Brajković – head of EU funds and International cooperation in Croatian Olympic Committee – and Neven Šavora – Director of Office for national sports and development programmes.
A meeting was also held at the ministry for sport with Roberta Karadža, Service for International Cooperation in Sport (Senior Adviser Specialist) and Martina Jeričević,
Head of Service for International Cooperation in Sport – Head of the Sector for supporting the sports system and health-oriented physical exercise.
And the visits concluded in Bulgaria with their hockey federation’s Antonio Antonov (General Secretary); Dimitri Dubuisson (Development & Project Manager), and BHF Development Committee hosted EuroHockey.
Their engagements saw them meet Mr Galin Tzokov – Minister of Education and Science, Deputy Minister of Education and Science Dr Emilia Lazarova, Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports Prof Daniela Dasheva and Director of the National Sports Academy Prof Krasimir Petkov.
Following up these visits, a further online meeting was held with Ukraine which involved the national Olympic committee’s Liudmyla Panchenko (Executive Director), Ivan Bondarchuk (Director of the Olympic Movement and Sport Department), Iryna Panina (Head of the Department of Sports Development and Preparation for Olympic Forums) and Nelia Demianets (Head of International Department).
From Ukraine’s Federation of Field Hockey were Sergiy Dontsev (President) and Sergiy Kachynskyi (Vice President) while Yuliia Buieva (Head of Summer Team Sports Department) from the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine took part in the discussions.
