All ambassadors have completed four days of professional training in Leadership & Mentoring Skills by Lynda Byron’s ‘Leadership Journeys’ throughout January and February.
Over four different weekends throughout January and February, the group of ambassadors attended professional leadership training workshops to build on their own personal leadership skills. This training brought them on an inward journey to explore their current leadership practices, understand each other’s leadership practices and discover how they would like to develop themselves. Although this journey was not the same as spending time on the water, it brought them on a different type of adventure together.
As well as attending the training course, we had a number of open discussions about the sorts of projects we would like to work on to develop women’s opportunities in all paddlesports. Projects include:
- High Performance Training Camps for junior girls in Sprint/Marathon, Freestyle & Slalom
- Discipline Specific Coaching Clinics for female university students aiming to see stronger performances at intervarsities competitions.
- Many ambassadors will engage in casual mentoring with a number of women/girls to help them develop their leadership potential
- Development days for women/girls in various disciplines
- Multi-discipline events which are accessible for all abilities
- Research into why women have stopped paddling
- Workshops on fear management on the water to be rolled out regionally
- Encouragement of more women and girls to attend events and competitions nationwide
- Providing more women’s introductory/intermediate training courses
- Developing opportunities for out competitive female juniors to meet and train together at club networking days
- Growing the number of women on club and discipline committees and joining the Canoeing Ireland Board of Directors
- Growing out social media presence for women through our various media platforms by committing to 50% female coverage
- Aim to reach record numbers of females at all events this year