Every year the International Olympic Committee (IOC) encourages the members of what is considered the Olympic Family, to observe International Olympic Day on 23 June, generally acknowledged as the day of the formal establishment of the organization.
St Vincent and the Grenadines Olympic Committee (SVGOC) has always joined the rest of the International Olympic Family in the annual celebration, bringing Vincentians together in the Olympic Day Run. The organization has long extended the celebration beyond a mere single day. For several years the SVGOC organizes an Olympic Week, holding different activities on given days.
The National Olympic Academy
The National Olympic Academy (NOA) is the official education arm of the SVGOC. This organization is composed of representatives of national sports associations and interested individuals who have a commitment to Olympic education in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
The mandate of the NOA is the promotion of Olympism across the nation. Olympism is a set of core principles that have become associated with the Olympic Movement, through the decades of its existence and which are included in the Olympic Charter, the official constitution of the IOC.
The St Vincent and the Grenadines NOA was established in November 1992 at an official ceremony held at Olympic House, then located in Kingstown Park.
The Objectives of the NOA include:
To organise seminars, workshops and courses for all age groups on Olympism and the Olympic Movement.
To promote Olympic Values Education in the educational institutions of St Vincent and the Grenadines and work towards making the Ministries – Education, Youth, Sports Culture, Women’s Affairs and Community Development – full partners in the work of the Academy.
To organise events such as the Olympic Week and Olympic Day Run, and the Quadrennial Queen’s Baton Relay, as well as the SVGOC’s anniversary and other celebrations.
To establish close working relationships with other organisations involved in sport education for national development.
To promote and sustain active living.
To establish a National Sports Library and Archives/Museum.
To establish a Sport Information Centre (SIC) that offers opportunities to study the history of sport and engage in sport research in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
To make optimum, effective use of the local media to inform and educate the general public about Olympism and the Olympic Movement.
To ensure an effective and efficient outreach programme, especially with youth groups and other social organisations.
To make recommendations to the NOC in respect of nominees for the annual International Olympic Academy Sessions and on the scheduling of Sports Administration Courses for appropriate target groups.
To promote sport through art and cultural forms.
To submit an annual Report to the NOC and to the IOA.
To establish fraternal ties and organise exchange programmes with other National Olympic Academies across the globe.
To engage in such other activities as deemed necessary by the SVGOC.
Physical activity
The SVGOC joined The Association for International Sport for All (TAFISA), several years ago, because it espoused its fundamental tenets on the value of physical activity in an individual’s life.
In any event, the SVGOC always considered it important that the average Vincentian should be made to understand that physical activity enhances one’s life, from before birth through to death. It leads to coordination but also to continued improvement and sustainability of one’s health. It facilitates mental health stability and the individual’s alertness and overall productivity.
Over the years the medical fraternity has endorsed the arguments posited by those who have always advocated that physical activity is a gateway to healthy living. We now know that physical activity is perhaps the single most important threat to the continued persistence of Non -Communicable Diseases and Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases.
In 2007, the CARICOM Heads of Government met and approved the Declaration of Port of Spain, appeared to congratulate themselves on the health successes of the region over several decades but failed to acknowledge their near-abominable failures in locating physical education and sport in the mix of approaches to combatting NCDs and CNCDs before the very meeting they seemed so elated about.
The declaration stated in part, ‘That we will mandate the reintroduction of physical education in our schools where necessary, provide incentives and resources to effect this policy and ensure that our education sectors promote programmes aimed at providing healthy school meals and promoting healthy eating”.
One remains uncertain as to whether the framers of this paragraph had taken the time to adequately analyse the Caribbean’s physical education reality before putting this together. Many of the members of CARCOM only introduced physical education at the secondary school level only after it was made an examinable subject by the Caribbean Examinations’ Council (CXC). This meant that its relevance was more directly related to affording students another subject option rather than to its efficacy in the life of the average individual member of society.
Our own Prime Minister received plaudits for his own declaration that what the Caribbean needed was ‘a wellness revolution’ without necessarily articulating what this would look like.
There was a time that he advocated an end to the plethora of aeriated drinks and sweets available to children at our schools. This did last ‘longer than Ms Janie fire’. It seemed all fanciful political fluff.
Nonetheless, we are now in 2023, 16 years later and for the very first time we are finally seeing efforts being made to appropriately introduce physical education into the primary school system in our country. It should be noted that this comes several decades after sports administrators, coaches and physical educators have been making such requests.
Indeed, the SVGOC has been leading the charge for physical literacy to be officially included alongside literacy and numeracy as the foundation pillars of learning in a child’s life.
Over the past decade, there has been increased interest shown in physical movement and healthy living.
Globally, the IOC has accorded TAFISA its rightful place as the leading global organisation for sport for all. This has led the organisation to adopt new strategies to popularise its mandate.
Thanks to Covid-19, Vincentians who hardly ever bothered about their own wellness in a physical sense, too to walking, riding, jogging and other forms of physical activity. It was a case of having been scared into physical activity more than a reflective response to the longstanding evidence of the positive value of movement.
The runway of the former ET Joshua Airport became and still is a physical activity haven in the post-pandemic era.
The newly constructed synthetic surface at Diamond, the new home of athletics’ track and field training and competition, remains a boon for those residing close by for their early morning and late evening physical activity programmes.
It is against the backdrop of the aforementioned challenges and the population’s response to the pandemic that Vincy Moves, became a reality. It was the coming together of the Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment, national sports associations, as well as fitness groups of all types from across St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Let’s Move 2023
The SVGOC has dubbed its Olympic Week celebrations for 2023, ‘Let’s Move’. This is most appropriate and a fitting emphasis on the importance of movement to Vincentian life.
The Week of Activities begins on Sunday 11 June, in large measure because many of our sports associations are engaged in the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games in El Salvador and they wish to participate in the celebration as they have always done in the past.
There will be a radio programme on Wednesday 14 June, a coming together of representatives, including athletes, of national sports associations, on the Thursday. Activities will climax with the Olympic Run, starting at Mt Bentick and ending at the Georgetown Playing Filed with a sports extravaganza labelled, ‘Let’s Move Georgetown’.
As with the launch of Vincy Moves in 2022, this year’s observance of Olympic Week, must not be seen as the be-all and end-all of the commitment to promoting physical activity for life. These are mere highlights in support of life-long movement for individual well-being.
Our communities would do well to come together to move on a regular basis, twice or three times, weekly. Walking together and playing together builds solidarity amongst peoples. Communities become more deliberately bonded with collective physical endeavours.
Our sporting history records the importance of sport to communities across the nation. Let us reclaim this legacy with pride and build upon it, not just for ourselves but for generations as yet unborn.
