Communication from the Board

Christmas Greetings 2020

Please enjoy Christmas Greetings from Italian members and friends

 

The board of the SNJU would like to wish all our members, friends, sponsors, volunteers, officials, coaches and our amazing athletes a Very Special and Safe Christmas and New Year

2020 was an extremely challenging year for everyone. A year that saw many of our tournaments, seminars, courses and trainings being cancelled or postponed.

We foresee these challenging times continuing in the first half of 2021 but rest assure we are still working hard in the background preparing for events, projects and trainings once some normality has returned to the world.

The SNJU continues to be a progressive force in the development of worldwide SN/Adaptive judo. 2020 saw our membership grow again with many new countries and federations becoming members. We truly believe together we can do more!

2020 started off well for the SNJU as we launched our European Erasmus Project “Autjudo” with our research partners from Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland. This project will explore the benefits of judo for people with autism and other disabilities. The project will run for three years and will produce an International Adapted Judo Best Practice Handbook as well as scientific findings and papers relating to the benefits of judo for people with autism.

Competition Opportunities: Tournaments opportunities were nonexistence for most of the year. Many of our planned major tournaments were postponed or cancelled including the World SN Judo Games & BENG in the Netherlands, The Swiss SN Open and Erasmus Conference in Uster, Switzerland and the European SN Games in Ireland.

The Swiss SN Open and Conference has been rescheduled for June 2021 and the European SN Games have been also rescheduled for October 2021. Further details will follow in the New Year.

Development courses: Our online courses were incredibly busy throughout 2020 as many took to online learning during their imposed spare time. Our Adaptive Coaching Course was by far the busiest with a large number of coaches from all over the world signing up to learn a bit more about adaptive judo. This of course is a very positive development because as the popularity and demand for adaptive judo grows worldwide so does the need for knowledgeable and enthusiastic coaches.

We approach 2021 with the same enthusiasm and drive as planned for in 2020 and aim to keep moving forward.

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 2021.

 

The SNJU Team

Tomas, James, Tycho, Cilia, Bob

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