Regular News
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You can now receive SNJU news through Telegram!
If you do not yet use Telegram, the secure brother of WhatsApp, you should! Because then we can supply you with all the news from the SNJU website! New information includes:
- New articles of course
- New publications
- Updates to the Special Needs Judo Calendar
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Our Technical Director and his uke are European Kata Champions!
This is the official EJU aftermovie of the EJU European Kata Championships. The SNJU Technical Director Tycho van der Werff (yondan) and his uke, David Lefevere (nidan) became first in Katame-no-Kata!
If you want to see what that looks like: This is their winning performance.
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SNJU Board Members receive TWO awards
This weekend during the EJU European Judo Championships, the EJU Social Inclusion Award was granted to our Technical Director Tycho van der Werff (the 2019 award) and IK Sodra, the judo club of SNJU President Tomas Rundqvist (the 2020 award). SNJU is proud to have this important prize awarded to two of our board members, and it will certainly encourage us to keep up our work in the progression of Special Needs Judo. -
Introducing JUDO CLUB ŽELEZNIČAR MARIBOR Slovenia
As part of our Special Features section, we would like to introduce Judo Club Zeleznicar Maribor, Slovenia. This club is a recent and welcomed addition to the SNJU family; this is their story.
Judo club Želežničar Maribor is one of the oldest judo clubs of Slovenia. We are located in the second biggest city, the city of Maribor. Since our founding in 1954 we have produced a number of top fighters – sportsmen, who achieved the highest domestic and international successes. The name of the club has been embeded in the minds of judoists ever since. We have been proud of our members’ achievements, have taken their loses with dignity and learned from their mistakes.
The club performes judo in various age groups, i. e. pre-school judo group, U10 judo group, U12 judo group (girls and boys), U14 judo group (girls and boys), U18 judo group and recreational group for adults. In 2019 we’ve established an inclusive judo group for children and adolescents and have successfully performed it ever since.
There have been people with specific impairments included in our regular programmes up until 2019, but since then they are participating workout in a secluded group, so that children with mental impairment (such as autism, Down syndrome) and other impairments (cerebral palsy) can participate. They wouldn’t be able to take place in judo training otherwise.
The goal of the inclusion group is to be able to allow every individual to develope and performe to his best abbility possible and to achieve success, gain confindence and feel accepted as a part of a group. It is our endevour to make children with impairments feel equal amongst peers, so socialising in group practice and other club activities and events is of essential meaning. Individuals, that are able to take part in regular practice despite of their impairment are included in regular training acitivities. Therefore, individuals have been included in the pre-school judo group and other age groups. For instance, in the recreational group for adults a judo master II. dan, who was totally blinded by disease, participates and it is a great honour for us to be able to practice by his side. We are participating annualy in the national inclusive judo competition and organise tournaments within the club.
We are extremely proud that our non-inclusive members have accepted the group as equal and are willing to participate in the group’s trainings to help out. Every person that steps onto our club’s tatami is an important part of the club chain and equaly significant. There is a common spirit of respect, help, co-operation, support and genuine joy about our members’ achievements that dominates our club.
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Happy Christmas – Year in Review
As we wish all our members and friends a very Happy Christmas we reflect on the amazing inclusive judo year we have shared together promoting and developing inclusion in judo worldwide.
The SNJU continues to be a progressive force in the development of worldwide SN/Adaptive judo. 2019 saw our membership grow to an all time high with many new countries and federations becoming members of the fastest growing SN/Adaptive judo organization in the world.
In the past eleven months we have achieved and surpassed some of our goals and ambitions for adaptive judo and look forward to the joys and challenges of 2020.
2019 started off with our own board meeting in Switzerland at which we laid out our ambitious plans for the year ahead. These plans included more development courses, more competitive opportunities, more personal development and more unity amongst countries with SN judo programs. This we not only spoke about and planned – but also achieved!
Competition Opportunities: This year we staged and supported the European Open SN Games in Sweden, the World SN Games in The Netherlands and the Swiss Open SN Championships in Switzerland. In additional our team was the lead support team for the Special Olympic World Games in Abu Dhabi. Individually each of our team members supported and organized inclusion events in their respective counties and helped many more in other countries.
Development courses: Our online SN referee course continues to attract interested parties and has resulted in an international register of developing SN referee across the world. We continue to host workshops and seminars at all our supported events and this year we added some additional seminars of interest including therapy/disability assisted dogs programmes, SN tournament preparation, SN & unified kata to name but a few.
In Switzerland this year we staged the first two day Coaching & Competition Seminar and workshops. A large number of our members clubs/countries took part in this incredible two day course which covered adaptive coaching, play & contest rules, disability awareness seminars, Judo games workshops and much more.. The event was run under the aspics of Special Olympics Switzerland, Swiss Judo Federation and run by SNJU directors James Mulroy and Cilia Evenblij.
Unity and Inclusion: The SNJU has been working very hard to bring together as many SN judo organizations, clubs and federations for the single purpose of raising awareness and further developing adaptive/SN/inclusive judo worldwide. Early this year we had the ideal opportunity to do just that. For the very first time in judo history SN judo was invited to take part in the annual EJU Judo festival in Croatia. The SNJU were instrumental in delivering seminars, workshops and advice to a number of large interested audiences.
Other amazing firsts was the inclusion of a number of teams who wowed the audience at this year’s EJU Kata Championships with demonstrations of adapted and unified kata. This we see as a major step forward in EJU thinking and policy and could possibly open the door to further development in this area of our sport.
In other News: The board of the SNJU are delighted and excited to be the major contributors to the EU funded “Autjudo” Erasmus + programme. Funding was secured and the research program will run for the next three years across six European countries.
We approach 2020 with the same enthusiasm and drive as 2019 and aim to keep moving forward. In 2020 we will be launching the long awaited online coaching course, this will go live in early January. Supported competitive events will include the World SN Games in Netherlands in April, the Swiss SN Open in June and the European Open SN Games in Ireland in October.
In addition we will be staging a number of seminars and workshops again next year at the EJU Judo Festival in Croatia.
For now we would like to wish the whole judo world and very Happy Christmas and look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in 2020.
SNJU Team Tomas, James, Tycho, Cilia, Bob
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The website is updated!
The website is complete! There may be some adjustments in the coming few weeks, but this is what it is going to look like. If you go to snju.org you see a static page rather than the familiar blog. The blog is still there though- you can access it through the big SNJU logo, or the menu item “SNJU Blog”.
The second big change is the way you receive emails. Look at the bottom of the email, and you will see that you can completely unsubscribe yourself, or you can only subscribe to certain categories.
With these changes, our site is now fully compliant to European rules.
