Beneden Leeuwen, The Netherlands
November, 20st 2010
Dear Boccia friends,
Saturday 30 October 2010 was a historical day for our sport Boccia. That was the day that during the CPISRA General Assembly in Stockholm - Sweden a fast majority of the member nations voted in favor of the motion filed by Portugal for the independence of Boccia.
On behalf of the CPISRA Boccia Committee I supported this motion because I truly believe that independence from CPISRA is the only way to make our sport grow globally.
An International Boccia Sport Federation opens new pathways for growth and development of our sport.
A working committee has been established to support the process of transfer of governance with the following Boccia specialists: Corneel van der Heiden - Chair CPISRA Boccia Committee, Joaquim Viegas – Ex-Chair CBC, current senior classifier, technical delegate, organizer of many international Boccia events and President of PCAND the Cerebral Palsy Sport Portugal Association, Helena Bastos – Head of Officiating CPISRA Boccia Committee,Ivaldo Brandão, classifier, President of ANDE the Cerebral Palsy Sport Brazil Association and Elsa Matthee – Head of Classification CPISRA Boccia Committee. This working committee will in the near future be increased with a representative of the current Boccia athletes and one or two other members. As Chair of the CBC I will also be the Chair of this committee to secure the communication between CPISRA Executive Board and IPC.
We choose the name International Boccia Sports Federation to be registered as a working title. We encourage you all though to suggest any other name for this independend Boccia federation before the definite transfer of governance in September 2012.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all CPISRA officials and other volunteers involved in the past to get our sport to where we are now: an internationally recognized and very well organized Paralympic Sport!
But far more important the working committee realizes that we need your expertise, input and help in the future! Without our CPISRA officials we cannot run our sport! So I hope that we can still rely on all of you being part of an International Boccia Sport Federation as classifiers, referees, technical delegates and other volunteers.
To all athletes involved in our sport I want to make a promise for the future on behalf of the working committee which is the following: Boccia was developed for CP Athletes and will continue to be a sport for CP Athletes from grassroots to elite! Although we want to develop and grow as a sport by allowing other severly disabled athletes we will always safeguard our CP athletes in this process!!
As a working committee we embrace transparency and all our actions and decisions can be followed on the blog: internationalbocciafederation.blogspot.com Which also means that this blog will be our communication with you, so we welcome all your suggestions, plans and criticism!
Last but not least I would like to emphasize that without the past and future support of the CPISRA Executive Board we would not have been or will be able to walk this path of transfer of governance of our sport Boccia.
Kind regards,
Corneel van der Heiden
Chair CPISRA Boccia Commitee
Chair Working Committee IBSF
