Workshops: Ready to go from 1st of May

The May Day public holiday in 2022 is set to take on a special meaning for the fight against doping in athletics, as it will be the start of the six-month period during which I RUN CLEAN ambassadors in six countries deliver official test workshops for the project

After a long and challenging preparation process, all the initial translations of the PowerPoint slides for the athlete and parent workshops have been completed by the six national ambassador teams.  The project’s Core Group thanks everyone involved for their efforts.

Ambassadors are now invited to transfer the text they have translated to the newest versions (2.0) of both sets of slides, which are available in the Project Team Area and then confirm completion with their national coordinator (remember, there is no need to translate the instructions in the slide notes at this time as these will eventually be updated). Once this is done the official test workshops can start.

The central participant registration system and the pre-workshop survey are both ready and the link has been sent all the national coordinators so they can include it in workshop promotions in their countries.

PowerPoint slides for the coach workshop are almost complete (we are waiting to shoot a special video in the first weeks of May) and further information will be given in the next edition of the newsletter.

It is expected that the ambassador teams will deliver a total of 15 test workshops in their country – 5 for athletes, 5 for parents and 5 for coaches – before the end of October.

Finalisation meeting: First thoughts

Now that the test workshop period is set to begin (see above) the I RUN CLEAN project team is starting to prepare for the very important next step in the workshop development process.

According to the project plan approved by the European Commission, the ambassadors who deliver the official test workshops will be invited to a finalisation meeting to share their experiences and recommendations for adapting the workshop syllabus.  

The meeting will also be a chance for ambassadors to give input on the training programme for the second generation of ambassadors in their countries.

Current thinking is to either stage the finalisation workshop immediately after test workshop period, sometime in November this year, or to organise it in late winter/early spring of 2023. No venue has been discussed yet.

We won’t make any decisions until we know if our request to the Commission to extend the project competition deadline by six months to 30 June 2023 has been approved (we have a verbal assurance but we are waiting to see the confirmation in writing).

Meanwhile, ambassadors are encouraged to communicate their preferred date (late 2022 or early 2023) to their national coordinators so we can factor their wishes into our planning. 

New collaborator 

We know that all I RUN CLEAN ambassadors will want to join us in wishing a belated welcome to Monica D’Amico, who joined our team on 1 January this year.

A PhD student at project partner Sapienza University in Rome, Monica works closely with Andrea Chirico in the Department of Psychology.

So far, Monica has been busy updating the workshop PowerPoints, including preparation of the new drawings used for the 2.0 versions and selection of the videos. She has also worked on the workshop participant registration system and the participant surveys, both the pre- and post- workshop versions.

In the coming months Monica will assist Andrea with the collation and analysis of the data gathered for the impact research element of our project.

Workshop delivery news

After this week’s online meeting of the I RUN CLEAN project’s Core Group we can share the first information about the planning for official test workshops (using the approved syllabus and PowerPoint as well as the pre- and post- workshop Impact surveys):

• Ambassadors in Bulgaria have been quick off the mark and are already planning two official test workshops in May. The team, which has set up a Viber group for its internal communications, anticipates that each workshop will be welcoming several “walk-in” participants who have not previously registered. This is a main reason why the QR code last-minute registration possibility was added to version 2.0 of the workshop PowerPoint slides. Remember that the Bulgarian team began delivering pilot workshops as far back as February 2021!
• The team in France also has experience delivering pilot workshops prior to the competition of the official syllabus and PowerPoint slides, the most recent of which took place last week on 22 April. Their first three official workshops will take place at a training camp on 11 and 12 July – two for athletes and one for coaches.  The team has set up a WhatsApp group for its internal communications.
• For Spain, we know that the team also has a WhatsApp group set up.  After reporting that the PowerPoint slides have been translated, the team let us know that they are also planning at least one and possibly more workshops in the month of May.  Ambassador Ella Bestué is in close collaboration the Spanish federation’s communications department and therefore in a good position to help with the online promotion of the test workshops, which will take place in the federation’s offices in Madrid.

Attention ambassadors! If you have any information about your team’s delivery of the official test workshops please make sure that you or your national coordinators share on the project team WhatsApp group or with Cyril Savidan (cyril.savidan@euroathledev.eu) so we can include it in future editions of this newsletter.  Thank you for your support.