As part of the Asia 1 Million project Asia Rugby has invested in Central Asia, and as part of that investment, a Safeguarding workshop took place during the Asia Rugby Championship Division III Central competition.
Safeguarding workshop
With coaches from hosts Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan the workshop was a breakthrough in getting Safeguarding policies in place in the region.
The Safeguarding programme was delivered and developed by Child Fund Passitback with this and other player welfare initiatives such as Rugby Ready workshops and World Rugby FAIR course, Asia Rugby continues to solidify its commitment to putting players first .
With this Asia Rugby is taking steps to ensure that the incremental growth of the game across the region takes place in a safe environment.
The Asia 1 Million project has been running since May 2016 when Asia Rugby Council agreed on launching the project with the aim of engaging 1 million new player participants in Asia by 2020 as part of the Impact Beyond 2019 programme for Rugby World Cup 2019.
The Impact Beyond 2019 programme aims to capitalise on the success and harness the potential of the world’s most populous continent by focusing on four key pillars to enable unions to drive participation growth while growing sustainable business models for the sport:
- GROWING THE GAME IN JAPAN
- GROWING THE GAME ACROSS ASIA
Target: One million new players in Asia with a total of two million by 2020
- GROWING BROADCAST TO INSPIRE NEW AUDIENCES IN ASIA
- GROWING THE GAME GLOBALLY
The Asia Rugby investment for the Central Asia sub-region. is focused on providing opportunities for teams from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to play age grade rugby. The investment is also on Get Into Rugby and Safeguarding workshops.
The Safeguarding Working Group sits under Asia Rugby’s Player Welfare & Medical Committee. The formation of the Safeguarding Working Group shows Asia Rugby taking steps to ensure that plans for incremental growth of the game across the region take place in a safe environment.
Asia 1 million
As Part of Asia 1 million Project Kazakhstan also hosted a youth rugby tournament.
This tournament was named by first president of Kazakhstan Rugby Federation Abdikadirov Toleubek with 31 teams participating. With teams from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, the competition was run over two days and highlighted the potential talent in the region with three age groups – Under 10s, under 12s and under 14s
18 of the teams were boys and 13 teams were girls.
The Asia 1 Million Project initially involved 5 Unions and will now be expanding to 17 Unions.
