Among the stars, entertainment and ceremonies at last year’s European Athletics Awards Night in Tallinn, Estonia, was the announcement that three women had been named as the latest recipients of European Athletics scholarships for future women leaders.
Yana Kasova of Bulgaria, Denmark’s Nanna Brandt and Melissa Robertson of Great Britain will be the 2014 beneficiaries of the programme giving young women at the beginning of their careers in athletics opportunities to participate in activities designed to help them progress as leaders and naturally change the balance of men and women in charge of our sport.
Their names are added to those of six others who have received scholarships since the programme’s inception in 2009.
This year’s trio will start out by joining approximately 50 other women from around Europe and other areas of the world at the 2nd Women in World Athletics Seminar in Kenilworth, England, 4-7 April, a joint project of British Athletics, European Athletics and the IAAF Regional Development Centre in Moscow.
They will then be invited to participate in the European Athletics-UNESCO Young Leaders Forum, which will be staged in conjunction with this summer’s European Athletics Championships in Zurich.
If the experiences of the previous scholarship recipients are anything to go by, the three have much to look forward to.
Timea Daka was working at the Hungarian Athletics Federation as an assistant while studying for a university degree in Sports Management when she received one of the three scholarships awarded in 2011. Now responsible for competition at the federation and with a string of secondments to major international events behind her, Daka is in no doubt that her scholarship helped her to reach the goals that she had set herself.
“It was a great pleasure to be a part of the programme,” she explains. “I learned many things, such as that we young people and women really can make a difference. It taught me that young, passionate people can reach anything they want and from that point I could believe nothing was impossible.
“What I enjoyed the most was the Young Leaders Forum in Helsinki during the 2012 European Athletics Championships. Those 3 days were amazing. It was exciting to get to know lots of young people from other European countries who like athletics passionately, as much as I do. It was good to know information about athletics in their countries.”
Slovakia’s Simona Svachova, another of the 2011 scholarship recipients, also found the networking and ideas exchange useful.
“Last year’s ‘Women in World Athletics’ seminar in Birmingham was memorable,” she recalls. “I had never been to any seminar like this one. The programme, topics, lectures and organisation were great and I met new friends from different countries and could speak with them about problems in athletics in their countries, about Kids’ Athletics and many other things.”
For Sweden’s Anna Linner, a javelin coach who was employed full-time at the Gothenburg Athletics Association and also carrying out work for her national federation, her 2009 scholarship helped her to develop her self-belief as she embraced new roles in the sport.
“I took on a national team leader role more or less at the same time as I won the scholarship and it made me feel more confident and good about myself and feel comfortable to take things on,” she comments. “I have a good work position where I have been allowed to develop with time and to take on bigger and bigger things and projects.”
Travel opportunities and the opportunity to exchange views with those from different cultures also formed key aspects of the programme, which Linner readily acknowledges.
“In 2010 I got the opportunity to go to Evian, France, in January with five other women from Sweden and then in July to the Young Leaders Forum in Barcelona. I like and appreciate the networking; finding people with other ideas and thoughts and the possibility to connect and get inspired by people I would not meet by myself in that kind of way.
“Also, I had been a volunteer at the first Young Leaders Forum, in Gothenburg in 2006, and it was fun to see what Barcelona did with the concept.”
Like Linner, Aysegul Baklaci, a former Turkish international athlete who works as a co-ordinator at a multi-sports club in Istanbul, found the seminar in Evian a worthwhile experience, but saw the whole scholarship programme as vital in her development as a leader in sport, partly as an outlet through which she could use the skills that she already possessed, but had not yet had the opportunity to demonstrate at home.
“It provided me with opportunities to demonstrate my leadership characteristics,” she confirms. “After the programme, I took part in the 2012 European Athletics Championships and 2013 European Athletics Junior Championships as a team leader. At the 2012 London Olympics, the 2013 European Athletics Indoor Championships and the recent World Championships I was a commentator for our national channel, TRT, the most watched in our country.”
Another former athlete, Poland’s Aneta Kazcmarek, shares the view that the Future Women Leaders scholarships provide vital opportunities for women to develop their contacts list.
“I enjoyed sharing new ideas, making new friends and networking and the workshops gave me the opportunity to debate, share practices and good examples of other people's involvement within athletics. I will definitely implement what I’ve learned in my work for our federation and my life in general.”
While the European Athletics Future Women Leaders programme is about assisting individual women identified by their federations as potential leaders with their personal development, the ultimate aim is to compliment the successful European Athletics Women’s Leadership Awards with a new approach to changing the gender balance in the sport’s leadership.
In addition to becoming leaders at local or national level themselves, each of this year’s trio of recipients is expected to share their experiences with other ambitious young people through the European Athletics Young Leaders Community website and Facebook page in the hope of increasing awareness of the issues involved in gender equity and generate new ideas for addressing them.
As Anna Linner says, “The [scholarship] programme showed me that we as a sport still have a long way to go when it comes to men and women being equal. It will take at least another 40 years if we follow the same pace as we have for the last 50!”