Greetings to all of the World Sport Chicago volunteers and a belated Happy New Year. I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. I know that many of you spent a portion of your holidays at McCormick Place helping with the WSC activities at the Mayor’s Chicago Sports Fest. This was our fourth year at Sports Fest and each year our space has gotten bigger, we’ve offered more events and reached more kids. Our 2009 area included competitions in archery, badminton, fencing, Paralympic boccia and wrestling as well as many other sports for kids to try (see more below). I want to say a big thank you to all of you who were able to come out and help us. It was a fun event for the kids and, hopefully, for each of you. It was also important to show that WSC’s commitment to the kids of Chicago continues.
As we look forward to 2010 it’s going to be a big year for us. We are in the last stages of finalizing several events including a national elite artistic gymnastics competition and both a youth wrestling competition early this summer and a national and international competition in the fall. Also, this September World Sport Chicago will be the host of a major international conference on sport. The Beyond Sport conference recognizes outstanding projects from around the world that use sport as a vehicle for social development. This year’s conference, which will start September 26th, will include meetings of international mayors, a meeting hosted by the UN of education ministers from around the world to discuss the impact of sport on girls and equality of education as well as many other discussions. For all of these events we’ll need to lean on our volunteers to help with the execution so keep an eye on the volunteer website and emails for more information.
Mark your calendars for next Thursday as WSC partners with the Cubs organization and Wrigley Field to arrange a fun-skate with local Chicago Olympians and Paralympians. The event will be held at the skating rink at Wrigley Field on Thursday, February 11th, the night before Vancouver’s opening ceremonies. More information will be coming shortly.
In addition to all of these events we will also be organizing our summer track program again this year. Many of you played a big part of last year’s program and we’re looking to make this summer bigger and better.
Looking to get engaged today? We encourage those who are interested to check out our Coach for Chicago program. Coach for Chicago is a program aimed at matching people who want to volunteer to support a youth program in the city with organizations looking for support. Our goal is to find people who were high school and/or college athletes and are looking for ways to give back to their sport. Many organizations around the city are looking for people who can contribute time to help bring greater sports experience and insight to kids in their programs. We are hoping to match these two groups. If you are interested in the program or know someone who might be please contact us at coach@worldsportchicago.org. We believe there is a huge untapped group of people who can give anywhere from an hour every couple weeks to an hour a day to help the kids of Chicago have a better sport experience.
In addition to all of these activities look for announcements in the next month about some exciting changes in World Sport Chicago.