Asian Paralympic Committee Launch Webinar Series

The Asian Paralympic Committee (APC) have announced a series of webinars designed to support the development of the Paralympic Movement in the region during the Coronavirus pandemic.

APC President Majid Rashed explained the thinking behind the webinars: “We’ve been holding online meetings with each of our NPCs to understand the impact of Covid-19 and to establish how we can help them to hopefully emerge stronger. It’s clear that the cancellation of many events and activities due to the pandemic has been disappointing and frustrating but we were determined to try to make the best of the situation. We therefore have decided to turn this pause in the normal sporting calendar into a positive and to use the time to share knowledge and expertise with our membership and the webinar series is designed to do just that.”

Working with International Federations and International Disability Sport Organisations, the webinars aim to educate and inform Asian NPCs, athletes and future Asian Para Games organisers on various topics, including technical aspects of sports and classification through to tips on bidding and hosting tournaments.

Tarek Souei, APC CEO, said: “We know that in Asia, some sports are widely practised, others less and so we are pleased to be working with IFs such as IWRF (Wheelchair Rugby) and World Sailing to equip NPCs with the knowledge of how to develop these sports further. Even within the widely practised sports there is an opportunity to educate NPCs and Officials on their latest technical developments. We hope that this series of webinars will help us to continue with our mission to support the NPCs to enable Asian para-athletes achieve sporting excellence”.

The first webinar will kick off on 27^th August where World Para-Powerlifiting will deliver an introduction to LiftED, their Lift Educational Video Database. This will be followed by sessions delivered by FISA on para-rowing, IWRF on Wheelchair Rugby and World Sailing on para-sailing with more webinars from other sports to follow.

APC Sport Manager Seung-Hoon Lee commented: “We are really pleased with the response to date from the IFs on staging these webinars. Asia has so much untapped potential for many para-sports and this unexpected pause in the sporting calendar gives us an ideal opportunity to focus on developing the Paralympic Movement across the region.”