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Chile
Contact Persons
Hernán Sánchez
Role in NA
General Manager
When and where?
13-14 May
What was the target group?
Children that had never played hockey
How many people took part?
Day 1 - 18 children, Day 2 - 40 children
What was the aim of the event?
Present hockey to children of a school in the suburbs of Santiago that have never played hockey before.
Description of the event
After the Junior Women’s World Cup that has hosted in Santiago, we have found that there is a great interest in our sport that had not been explored. Our players are mostly high class private school students, so our targets are schools that have never dreamed of playing hockey, since from the outside it seems a costly and difficult sport. This is where we thought that the FIH slogan fitted in properly.
Our objective is to introduce hockey to a non-hockey school and invite them to participate in a Children’s weekend tournament.
Activities began with a survey of 56 schools in the Santiago area. We asked three basic questions that help make us decide which school to favor with this activity. After two weeks of calling and sorting out the most suitable answers, the Las Vizcachas Country School was elected.
We got the support of the School’s Director, the P.E. teacher and the parents of the Kindergarten and began a self-made promotion campaign in the school. The children in their art classes made posters and posted them in the school’s halls.
On our side, we had to prepare all the equipment so these little children could finally hold a stick and learn all basic techniques so they will be able to participate as a team.
The federation has 20 used sticks in a warehouse, asked the national teams to lend their hockey balls, some practice cones and most important to choose from the many official players to act as coaches for these days.
The two day initiative was held In the school’s gym and on their soccer pitch
The great success of the activity made it difficult to keep the children’s parents seated, they also wanted to participate. On the second day we brought along a few more sticks and made the parents also try the game.
Result of the event
The school is presenting a project to the municipality to receive their support. The school has signed their children’s team to participate in the Children’s Tournament to be held 20-21 of May.
Follow-up from the event
We plan to repeat the activity twice per month in different schools. There are thousands of sleeping Hockey players that we must wake-up.
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