3 - 9 May 2001
Issue No.532
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 3 - 9 May 2001 Issue No.532 |
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A head for the disabled
In Bahrain, plans for the future of mentally handicapped athletes are mapped out. Abeer Anwar reports
In a bid to help mentally handicapped athletes, meetings were held in Bahrain to discuss ways of developing the Special Olympics programme in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Sheikh Fawaz presenting Abdel-Wahab with an honourary gift
Under the auspices of Sheikh Fawaz Bin Mohamed Bin Khalifa Al-Khalifa, president of Bahrain's General Organisation for Youth and Sports, delegates at the meetings, held between 12-13 April, discussed a five-year plan by the Special Olympics International (SOI) MENA office to raise the number of athletes. "With the help of experienced countries such as Egypt and Bahrain, new programmes could be set up in such a way that we can increase the number of athletes to 110,000 by 2006," Ayman Abdel-Wahab, managing director of SOI in the MENA region, said.
The meetings also discussed the results of surveys conducted in the region to define which countries need help with their programmes by way of trainers and administrators. Abdel-Wahab decided to categorise the region into countries "that don't need any help because their programmes are very successful such as Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Mauritania, Qatar, Kuwait and Lebanon. We will start with countries which need help like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE." Abdel-Wahab is due to visit these countries to know their needs and launch their programmes. I will revisit them by the end of the year to know how far they've gone in implementation," he added.
On the agenda were technical reports submitted by the Arab Games held in Morocco last year and the 2001 World Winter Games in Alaska. The idea of men's and women's floor hockey teams which participated in Alaska was a success and Abdel-Wahab said it could be done again in coming competitions "since it gives an opportunity for all countries to participate, especially those which can't afford to send a full delegation."
Members supported Lebanon's bid to host a women's basketball championship from 23 -29 June. A seminar for trainers and administrators will be held during the competition.
The meetings were attended by 50 members from MENA's Regional Leadership Council (RLC) in the Arab, Middle East and North African region. They included Ismail Osman, RLC chairman, Magda Moussa, Special Olympics Egypt (SOE) president and Salah Abdel-Hakim, SOE national director. Also on hand was Jim Schnutz, vice president and organisational development manager, John Tomaro, grants manager, and Tom Songster, SOI senior vice president.
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