We had some powerhouse speakers at this year's Club Congress 2021, hailing from Puerto Rico USA, Brisbane, Melbourne as well as homeground Singapore. The topics and insights brought to the table were incredible and also extremely relevant to the current climate of our gymnastics community.

Frank Sahlein & 3rd Level Consulting have been working closely with Singapore Gymnastics for the last couple of years and has seen the organisation grown from strength to strength. This time round, he shared about bringing global perspectives and highlighting the total impact revolving around staff development. Staff development itself is a broad topic and Frank started the discussion about acquiring staff with a simple but startling paradigm shift of the various avenues that clubs can tap into to look for new sources of staff. Following staff acquisation, the discussion moved into mentorship that does not start on the first day of the job, but rather the very moment staff applied for the job. There was a lot of emphasis on customer-centred learning as well as opportunities for career progression within our industry to keep staff motivation high despite the precarious COVID climate that shakes the world today.

Another name who has been working closely with Frank was John Mitchell from Delta Gymnastics, whom we had the pleasure of inviting to speak for the first time with SG. In his lecture, John shared how Culture underpins alignment and helps clubs achieve to their potential and how it was the secret sauce to success. Despite never have heard what Frank's earlier sharing was about, it was as though they had discussed beforehand because John's lecture too started with staff acquisation, picked up from where Frank left off and continued on about how it was important for clubs to find the right people and to get the right people to find them back. There was a lot of delving into values identification, values evaluation, the ritualisation of what matters most and how they can lead each club into being the best version they can be. The lecture was jam-packed with insights, thoroughly engaging and so valuable to not just clubs but for SG as an organisation. 

Next we had Matthew Scholes from Positive Sports Coaching who came and shared about Positive Parent Interaction with our club managers and administrators. A lot of times we often think how we can better support clubs or coaches to support our athletes but we realise there is another big group of stakeholders whom clubs and coaches can support, which is our athletes' parents! Matt's talk had so much good stuff relating to creating positive influence on the athletes, engaging parents to work with coaches to do the things they can to support their athletes. We also discussed about how we can reassure parents and help them understand our coaches better and vice versa because at the end of the day parents, coaches and club have one common goal, which is to support their athlete the best they each can.

Lastly, we were fortunate to have the CoachSG Safe Sport Task Force give a presentation on Understanding Safe Sport in our sport of Gymnastics. They've prepared a fantastic presentation deck which included the definition of Safe Sport and the 5 form of harrassment and abuse, the overview of Safe Sport in Singapore, understanding the level of risks in their clubs via mentimeter quizzes, safeguarding policies, case studies, club responsiblities in Safe Sport, responding to Disclosure and a Q&A. The presentation was absolutely well done and definitely something Singapore Gymnastics would love to take on and continue to share with our wider gymnastics community as Child Safety and Safe Sport is a big piece of work that we can focusing on. We believe education is key in raising awareness and changing culture.

We would like to express out sincere thanks to all the speakers who took time and participated in Club Congress 2021. We also hope all our participating clubs received many valuable takeaways and we look forward to the next congress with more fantastic topics to share with our clubs and coaches.