Last November, the Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of State (Sport) and Sport Canada undertook to help the Ministry of sports in Haiti to organize the development of sports in their country through the implementation of a national coach training program. CAC was therefore promptly commissioned to direct this international aid project.
In the current special context that Haiti finds itself—the long reconstruction process after the 2010 earthquake—the opportunity to train adults who would work with children and teens in sports takes on a whole new meaning. Indeed, taking good care of these youth through organized sports activities while the country is getting back on its feet motivates and inspires a young population in need of such care.
To this end, a CAC team visited Port-au-Prince last February with a view to assessing the needs and the existing sports setup. In April, the same team went back to train 42 coaches from about 10 sports disciplines. CAC will be going back to the country four more times before April 2012 to complete not only the coach training, but also to train their future coach trainers with the aim of making Haiti completely self-sufficient on this front in the future.
In these two short videos, you can actually see that sports installations and venues are very different from the weight rooms and volleyball courts that we are used to here in Canada.
The volleyball practice was actually shot at the only “sport-études” program in the country. Not easy to talk about sport safety when you have rocks laying around your practice field…
This picture was taken right after the official closing ceremony and national press conference that was held at the end of an intensive 5 days training session with the coaches.
Below, from left to right: Charles Cardinal (international trainer for CAC), Diane Culver (trainer for CAC and responsible for University of Ottawa’s active research on this project), Marc Schryburt (responsible for international programs at CAC and coordinator of the training team), Evans Lescouflair (Minister for Sports in Haiti), Valiollah Saint-Louis (Director of physical activities and sports at the ministry in Haiti), Daniel Pierre Charles (Director General of the Ministry of Sports in Haiti), and his Deputy Director, Simon St-Hubert.
