Singapore!

If you don't know yet, I took another placement with Commonwealth Games Canada's Capacity Support Program - this time in Singapore for three months. I got here EARLY on Saturday and have had a packed schedule since!

I had a great weekend of exploring and just getting the little things I needed to make life comfy here - some food, toiletries, my own mug, etc. The apartment is soooo luxurious. TV, garbage chute right in the apartment, plus it's serviced. Crazy to me, but pretty standard here, it seems!  Met up with a friend from Vancouver who was here to watch the F1 race (I sadly could not get a ticket to the race, nor could I afford it). I took local transport which is really well marked. The bonus is that it's so clean and it's air-conditioned. Ate some local food which I know I will enjoy immensely while I am here.

My first day at the Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC) was on Monday. They currently have a temporary office in the building of the Singapore Sports Council (SSC). I'm a short, sweaty 10 minute walk from the office. There are murals of national athletes all over the interior walls. I was so inspired when I walked in. The SSC has 150+ staff from marketing to sports medicine; all working together to manage sports in the country. The SNOC has 6 staff who so far have been super helpful and definitely keen to get started on Zeus. The staff go out for lunch everyday - generally at the local hawker centres close by where a lunch can be had for about 3 - 4 CAD and choices range from BBQ pork on rice to curry or laksa!

I was fortunate to have an invite extended to me to attend their London 2012 Athlete Appreciation Dinner last night. What an amazing event. In addition to the team being present, the Deputy Prime Minister who is also the President of the SNOC was the guest of honour, the super personable female Chef de Mission, and past Olympians including their first ever Olympic medallist from the 1960 Games in Rome. Probably better summed up here: http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/singapore/story/olympians-feted-ceremony-medallists-get-cash-20120926.

Culturally, I'm a little nervous - only because it seems so familiar at times that I'm afraid I'm overlooking something. I get the humour, many of the traditions, the work ethic, and bits and pieces of the language (aside from English, Mandarin is commonly used). I already feel so much more at ease here than my entire last year which makes me a little cautious. I guess we'll just wait and see! One of the things I do hope to accomplish is that by the end of the three months, when someone asks me what I need in Mandarin, I'll be able to understand them even if I still have to respond on English.

So I hope to get one or two more posts up this week about Hawaii, but if I don't, it's because we're preparing for a week-long Zeus workshop that's happening next week AND it's Mid-Autumn festival this weekend. I'm really excited about both things, but will write about it afterwards!

Zai jian!

Chapter Closed

As I write this en-route to Toronto, leaving debrief and Ottawa behind, I'm in an especially reflective mood. I'm sad that this experience as a Capacity Support Officer is over. I am excited for what is to come and to see where my Capacity Support Program Team 3 colleagues will go. The group we were a year ago and the group that got together this weekend was completely different. We all learned that we are extremely capable in taking on anything that was thrown at us and making opportunities out of everything. We have all grown so much. So proud of everyone involved and so happy to have had all of you influence the change in me this past year.

So what did we all accomplish? I will list some of the legacies we have left behind in our host countries:

• Weekly women's fitness classes where they did not exist before
• Recreational basketball leagues across a host country
• New social media strategies to increase engagement with Commonwealth Games Associations and National Olympic Committees
• New national sport events/competitions ranging from triathlons to youth multi-sport games
• Proposals for funding, facilities development, team development, and long-term athlete development
• Educational programs promoting Olympism and Olympic Values, anti-doping, and fair play
• Sport programs
• Games team management processes
• Staff and volunteers trained in games team management software (Zeus)
• Newly developed or strengthened national sport councils and relationships between national sport bodies and CGAs/NOCs

And this is just the start ... 

I think I can safely say that a lot of us "found" parts of us that we didn't know existed. We definitely had our limits pushed and we all made the best of our situations. My biggest take away - learning how to communicate more effectively both with people in my host country and people back home. I've strengthened some important relationships and have become better at making new ones. 

Thank you Commonwealth Games Canada staff and volunteers for the amazing support you have offered to us to help us grow tremendously over the last year. That support also allowed us to achieve outcomes that I think none of us could have expected given the opportunities that we found and also were presented to us. 

Now I look forward to staying connected with this amazing group of change makers and connecting with others as well. Need a job done in community development, volunteer coordination, event planning, program management, fundraising, or strategizing, especially in the sport sector? I for sure will know someone, or a team, who can help you. ;) 

April 29th - Support Sport-based Social Development Programming!

Since 1993, Commonwealth Games Canada (CGC) has reached more than 1.9 million children in Africa and the Caribbean while training more than 8600 youth leaders to conduct sport-based social development programming. This year, on April 29th, 2012 in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Halifax, you can help Sport for More, a grassroots sport program that includes HIV/AIDS education, stay‐in‐school initiatives and life skills building activities, reach even farther.

This is the first of two running events this year with causes that are close to my heart (the other being the Scotiabank Charity Challenge where I will be supporting the Canadian Liver Foundation). For more information and how to register, go to:  http://www.commonwealthgames.ca/ids/get-involved/game-of-life/index.html
(Team discounts available when groups of 10 or more people register using promo code: GCG12GOL)


For this event I won't be running, but instead will be coordinating the ceremonies. I do encourage you to get out and run/walk, but there are other ways to support the Game of Life and get involved:

1) Volunteer your time @ the race (contact me)

2) Promote the event - Pass along information about the Game of Life to your friends and family and encourage them to get involved by coming out in support of the race if they live in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, or Halifax. This could be as easy as a link on your Facebook wall, an email to your networks, twitter or other ways.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Game-of-Life-Vancouver/311484282233385

3) Donate - Any contribution big or small is always a great help and is yet another way to get involved and support the cause. (you can do so online or ask me for a pledge form)

Click on the article below to get an idea on the impact Sport for More makes!

South Asian Beach Games 2011 - Hambantota

Ok, I have to warn some people that my observations in this post are quite frank. I don't mention any names, but if you read this and you recognize yourself being criticized in here, I make no apologies. I would be happy to talk to you about how we could improve upon the work that was done and I'd be happy to hear any reasonable feedback you may have on my work. Please e-mail me or call me at the NOC if you need to reach me. I know change is not immediate and that I probably have ruffled a few feathers trying to set some change into motion. I know that people here can be stubborn and some think that of me as well. I can only hope that change for the better will eventually take place - even if it's not a conscious decision because of lessons learned.

I also felt the need to wait to post this until the decision was made on where the 2018 Commonwealth Games were being held as Hambantota was a bid city, so there was no chance that people could say I influenced a negative outcome on the bid process (although Canada has now been blamed). Congratulations to the Gold Coast!


An opportunity that came up unexpectedly was one that involved work with the South Asian Beach Games (SABG). When I had returned from CYG and midterm, I was disappointed to see the staff hard at work on SABG. Prior to leaving, I had checked, and double checked with them that they didn’t want to use Zeus for SABG Accreditation, which they didn’t need but as we addressed that they promised that they would not be involved with any SABG work as the Games Secretariat had it under control.


It wasn’t out of choice that they had to do work for SABG as the Games Secretariat eventually needed the help of the NOC. Seeing the disorganization and fresh out of my experience with coordinating results at the CYG using Zeus, I inquired about results management for SABG. The reaction was an "uhhhhhh..." so I offered that I would look into the possibility of managing Sri Lanka's results on Zeus. That quickly turned in to managing the results for all of SABG, but instead of Zeus it was done on Excel. (Long story short, there are non-Commonwealth countries that are a part of SABG whereas Zeus is currently geared towards Commonwealth countries ... soon to change!) 


The two weeks leading up to the games were intense. The office staff worked through the weekend and stayed as late as 1am at the office only having to take up to two hours to get home and then get back on transit by 7am to get back to the office the next day. By the time the games started I was seriously worried about their health as they were running on empty especially since they were not eating meals regularly. Perhaps they are used to it as Sri Lankans eat breakfast early, then lunch around 1pm, then dinner isn't until well after 8 or 9pm! For me it was really a struggle as most of you know I snack all day long. I eventually was attached to a bag of food, but not food that I am used to eating as the only fresh food I could really carry was bananas. So during this week of prep and then at the games, dinner often wasn't until 10:30pm when we were back at our accommodation and for me that is WAY off my schedule and goes against my rule of eating before I sleep. But, if I didn't, I would have been nutritionally starving my body and that's not good either! 


Ok, so back to the disorganisation... it comes from the Games Secretariat being a bit old fashioned wanting to plan everything from beginning to end without help. They didn't realise they were a bit out of touch, I think, with how games procedures have evolved and the intricacies with planning such an event. For example, accreditation applications and the accreditation forms were done on paper ... with carbon copy paper to make multiple copies. THEN, these forms had to be entered by hand into the online "accreditation system" which wasn't completed on time for the teams to do themselves so the NOC staff and a team of volunteers had to enter them all. I had put "accreditation system" in quotations because it hardly qualified as one. It was an online form with fields to fill in which then filled in the accreditation card template. No reports could be run and the system was extremely slow. There all sorts of glitches and it was poorly developed. These cards then had to be printed off one by one through the system and we only had an inkjet printer to do it. Then, because the alignment of how the cards were printed was poor, each one had to be cut out of a piece of 8x11 paper by hand and then glued together because the print out was single sided. Then, these were stuffed by hand into a plastic pouch. Oi! 


Then there was the volunteer management. There was no volunteer manual. Sure, the volunteers received a training session, but a lot of those volunteers could not make the training session. As a volunteer I would have been frustrated as I would have had such a vague idea of what my role was, what the rules were, and who my resources were that I would not have felt empowered. However, these amazing volunteers pulled it off by coming together as a team. I could see some of the committee members being really frustrated with all the questions they were getting from the volunteers as they tried to solve problems ... but that is a result of not having proper procedures and communication protocols in place. 


One of my biggest frustrations was having to deal with the demands of the media here. They just didn't understand that sometimes, they had to wait for the information as we were working with limited resources. Many wanted paper print outs which was just not possible with the tools we had. I had to insist that the best way for them to receive updates was via e-mail. Unfortunately a few of them failed to understand the pace at which we could work at and what we had to work with which brought out the ugly side in me. I am not proud of it. I'm not sorry for it. But instead, I am disappointed in myself for not keeping my cool. What was really frustrating to hear was that the members in the media centre were not helping each other out. I don't know if it's common - I do know that agencies compete against each other to be the best. But really? Results are public knowledge and I'm sure passing a score over to a fellow member of the media isn't going to hurt your career.

Well, how about some positives? The venues were fantastic. The crowd in Hambantota was through the roof (literally). The matches were free to watch, as were the nightly concerts and as a result, the venues would be filled to the rafters with spectators. It was so so SO awesome to see a sporting event bring the community together to enjoy sport. I could tell that some spectators weren't familiar with the rules of the sports, but were having a blast anyhow!

And then there were the athletes. For many of them, this was their first ever international competition. For others, they were veterans. What was great was to see the cooperation of the veteran nations in some of the sports teach the newbies in some of the sports. For example, it was the first international competition for at least two of the teams participating in Beach Handball and the progress these teams made through the few days of competition were remarkable. The learning and adaptation that was going on was the spirit of sport visible for all to see. Loved it!

Personally, this was a huge learning and personal development experience. As I've been learning how to manage my stress and my tolerance level for uncomfortable situations, the ones I encountered at SABG were more challenging than most I've ever had to deal with. It pushed me to new limits and it really made me again, thankful for the training that has been provided to the CSOs by CGC and CGF. I struggle day to day with the cultural norms here and they were magnified tenfold at the games. It's so cliche, but it's so true when they say "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Grand Adventure Part 5 (Isle of Man)

We (Paddye and I) got to work right away on finishing up event entries and worked until it was time for opening ceremonies. It was a wee bit chilly but pretty cool to see all the young athletes parade into the opening. Some of them were so little (gymnasts)! It was a pretty impressive show; of course, youth driven. All the performers, dancers, and parkour artists were youth (except for the Vikings, that is ... whom we learned were actual members of a local Viking club).

The grand finale of the opening ceremonies. 

The following days were filled with results. We based ourselves at the NSC where badminton and swimming were taking place and the track was right next to it. We found a little corner in the cafe and called it home for about 12 hours each day ... to the point that a few volunteers came to see us each day to say hello and have a little chat!

Achini and Upuli - Sri Lanka Womens Doubles Team (white) in action against the Aussies;

The volunteers were remarkable. Everywhere we went they were so friendly and so helpful. If they didn't have an answer, they were certainly going to find it. If we looked alone, they'd sit with us to chat and tell us all about the Isle of Man. I love volunteers!



I wish I could say that I witnessed some pretty amazing sport performances, but truth was that we barely got any time away from our computers. I did manage to sneak away and see the final few points in the badminton match which Sri Lanka won the bronze medal in women's doubles. We got glimpses of the track as there were floor to ceiling windows in the cafe. It's amazing how disciplined, intense, and in shape these young athlete are! I most certainly was not at that point when I was 16 and maybe it was just that I didn't know what high performance sport really meant.

Everyday, having arrived with little rest, we got more and more exhausted. Our giggles and uncontrollable fits of laughter got more frequent as some of the littlest silly mistakes or forgetfulness became hilarious. There were times we laughed so hard I couldn't remember the last time I was in stitches like that! The long hours glued to our computers resulted in some pretty rewarding moments though. When we ran our first report to look for mistakes it was amazing how much data we had entered and how easily we could manipulate it in Zeus. Even cooler was that even as we were updating throughout the days of competition, someone at CGC was able to see our updates real-time while she was looking for Canadian results. Basically, any CGA using Zeus had access to these results as soon as we could enter them and run their own customized reports for their needs. Additionally, these results automatically updated to their databases of athletes so they don't have to do any data entry. The results are linked to the athletes forever so if an athlete competes these results stay with that name in Zeus. Cool, eh? Maybe not ... but I'm a bit of a geek.

And for your enjoyment, some photos!