The Federation of Irish Sport are delighted to announce and launch our Member Monday’s, focusing on members who have signed up to the 20×20 campaign pledging their support. Every Monday the feature will look at an exciting combination of specific women in sport strategies, key athletes, star under age programmes and fantastic women in sport activities.
Kicking off week one is Table Tennis Ireland.
Table Tennis Ireland
Table Tennis Ireland Women in Sport vision – “To create a structure and pathway to facilitate female participation in sport and to develop disciplines and skills which will benefit female athletes throughout their life”. To achieve this vision, we have set up Aims & Objectives as follows:
- Increase participation in the sport
- Create a culture of sport among females
- Develop a coach education structure specifically targeted at females
- Develop leadership skills among female participants
- Identify role models to ensure long term sustainability
TTI WIS has signed up to the 20 x 20 Championing Women in Sport campaign with the Federation of Irish Sport. The following bullet points summarised events/initiatives we have run since the campaign:
- 15+ WIS Fun Day to generate interest from all levels and age groups, total of 300+ females participated and age range between 7 and 60+
- 3 Introduction Coaching Courses have taken place, total of 28 female qualified as coaches at grassroots level
- On World Table Tennis Day, we run an International WIS Day and received great support from Home Countries’ coaches and players
- To build self-confidence, empower female young leaders and coaches, we have sent 3 females to Leadership Courses, and financially supported one female coach to Level One Coaching Course for further development.
We have committed to the 20×20 Charter to promote Irish Female Table Tennis and pledge to achieve the following:
- Increasing Media Coverage – to actively increasing media coverage of our female international teams and club/school competitions at all levels by 30% by 2020.
- Increasing Attendance at female events/games – actively promoting and planning for increasing attendance at identified female games and events by 30% by 2020.
- Increasing Participation – to actively increasing female participation at player, coach, referee, volunteer or administration level (please outline at least one here) by an overall average of 40% by the year 2020.
- Evolution of female only competitions
All the above has been included in the TTI WIS Plan for the next two years. It will demonstrate that we have evolved a strong structure and a robust system to achieve our ultimate goals – increasing female participation at all levels, empower female coaches and leaders and produce female role models to inspire the next generation.