Summary on IOC - ICSD Meeting

Dear athletes and members,

Following our meeting with the IOC yesterday, the Board of the ICSD met last night to review and discuss the insights that we gained from that meeting.

I would like to share with you these insights. The first is the clear commitment on both sides to work in a partnership for the benefit of our deaf athletes.

This includes the following opportunities: 

  • ICSD Women in Sports Commission: IOC were receptive to our request for support with accessing best practice in empowering women in sports including having our representatives access IOC programs.
  • Deaflympics hosting: we identified common areas for collaboration in securing hosts given the challenges being experienced by the IOC and the ICSD in lining up candidates for our games.
  • Governance: we acknowledged that given there were opportunities for improvement in our governance, it was also agreed that we would continue to work together so that we could benefit from the IOC’s deep expertise in sports governance.
  • Athletes Commission: following our commitment to establish an Athletes Commission at ICSD, the IOC were again, receptive to our suggestion that we have ICSD representatives participate in relevant IOC programs to ensure that our commission benefit from best practice in ensuring that the voice of our athletes drives our work.
  • IOC Commissions: we also agreed that we continue with the arrangement for ICSD representatives participate in IOC commissions.

This is just a few examples of the exciting partnership that lie ahead of ICSD and IOC and I am feeling very inspired by these real and meaningful opportunities for ICSD and IOC to work side by side, going forward.

Secondly, we also touched upon the topic of our funding. The feedback from the IOC was that they were very pleased with our work to date and that they would be putting forward a recommendation to the IOC board at their upcoming meeting in October that our funding be reinstated. 

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at ICSD.

 Rebecca Adam

ICSD President