Helping new countries develop paravolley disciplines

In a quest to add new countries to its membership roster, ParaVolley Europe has reached out to several National Volleyball Federations, National Paralympic Committees, Clubs and other entities to try and help them promote the ParaVolley disciplines in new European Countries.​

Through a Memorandum of Understanding, the new countries who have responded positively to that invitation have been given the framework within which to develop and promote these disciplines, without having to immediately go through the organisational processes. 

They will also be working to encourage participation by all athletes in ParaVolley events at local, regional, national and international levels, as well as creating educational and training opportunities at these same events. In addition, new countries will be invited as guests for some of our tournaments.​

As a result of the above, the following new countries have signed a memorandum of understanding: ISRAEL, SPAIN and KOSOVO.

ISRAEL

In the last six months since the cooperation between the Israeli Volleyball Federation and ParaVolley Europe was established, some considerable efforts have been made in order to establish Sitting Volleyball in Israel.

Basic achievements have been reached to spread out information and to unveil this new discipline around Israel.

  • The Official Sitting Volleyball Rules had been translated to Hebrew language.
  • A new module of acquaintance with this new discipline has been introduced as compulsory teaching material in all the volleyball instructors and coach courses.
  • The new module of Sitting Volleyball is officially recognized for physical education teachers to reach credit points.
  • Demonstration Sitting Volleyball matches together with a lecture are introduced in schools as part of the encounter of the students with the world of impairment.
  • Sport groups based on Sitting Volleyball had been established in some Rehabilitation Centers/Hospitals.
  • An agreement was achieved with the Israeli Defense Forces Disabled Organization to develop the discipline.
  • The project team is regularly delivering acquaintance trainings at Volleyball and Beach Volleyball clubs around the country – each time with some persons with impairment together with some volunteers from the local clubs.
  • A team composed of both people with and without impairments will take part in the 21st Maccabiah Games (the Jewish Olympics) as a guest team – hopefully at the next Maccabiah Games, teams from around the world will be invited to take part in an Official Sitting Volleyball competition.
  • Following all these preparations, they hope to recruit athletes, to create teams and to start trainings followed by a national level competition.

SPAIN

Sitting Volley Sevilla is the most recent new member as they signed a MoU on 8th July 2022. Sitting Volley Sevilla was created at the end of 2019 after a 15 year-long reflexion to bring this discipline to Seville.

Daniel López and Flavio Calafell are two conventional volleyball professionals and they did not hesitate to join forces to make paravolley a reality in Spain. With the support of the Volleyball Community, Sitting Volley Sevilla has managed to have a growing presence on social networks for everything related to volleyball for people with disabilities, both physical and intellectual. As a result, several clubs in Spain have expressed interest in starting to develop paravolley.

Throughout this time, Sitting Volley Sevilla has maintained continuous contact with the Spanish Paralympic Committee, the Spanish Federation of Sports for People with Physical Disabilities (FEDDF), with Mr. Juan Luis Pontand other national institutions and Paravolley federations, such as Argentina with Laura Cometto.
Sitting Volley Sevilla participate in sports programs for people with disabilities to reach more people who can enjoy paravolley. All this with a view to creating a network of clubs in Spain who can help develop this discipline all together.

KOSOVO

Paravolley Europe signed a MoU with the volleyball Federation of Kosovo (VFK) in March 2022. VFK is a non-governmental organization which governs the sport of Volleyball, beach volleyball and snow volleyball in the Republic of Kosovo.  It was first affiliated to the FIVB, CEV and BVA in 2016 and since then, has been working hard to develop the sport of volleyball through national and international activities. The federation is currently building its network of potential paravolley tutor so stay tune for more information soon!

If your country is interested in becoming a ParaVolley Europe new member country and requires some initial help to establish the disciplines, please do not hesitate to contact us at mail@paravolley.eu and we will be more than happy to guide you and help you develop Paravolley!

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