INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

Olympism and the Olympic movement are well known and awareness
is high among a very limited group of people such as JOA members.
Another reason is the lack of the foreign language skills of young
people. It is not easy for us to find young people who have interest in
the Olympic movement and at the same time have adequate
communication skills.
In spite of these problems, we have always been moving forward
to promote the Olympic movement. The project we are undertaking at
the moment is to hold events about the Olympic torch, which will
soon arrive in Tokyo. A special project team is now working to hold a
seminar and to collaborate with the JOC on this topic.
Another important challenge is how NOAs in Asia can cooperate
and collaborate with each other for achieving mutual goals. The
importance of the collaboration among Asian Olympic academies was
recognized during the session with China and Korea in Tokyo last
year.
We pay our sincere respects to the IOA for holding various
sessions every year. These sessions have provided NOA and NOC
members with wonderful opportunities to know and learn from each
other and have greatly promoted the Olympic movement throughout
the world for a long time. However, it seems the ties exist only on a
personal basis in most cases and not on an organizational basis, such
as between NOA and NOA or between NOC and NOC. I believe that
it is now important to establish an organization to collect information
from NOAs worldwide and promote communications among NOAs.
Such an organization may be something like a NOA union or the IOA
commission which existed before as a commission of the IOC.
Whatever the name is, I strongly believe that not only the personal ties
but also the continuous organizational relationships will be definitely
necessary for the promotion of the Olympic movement in the future.
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