Webinar: Inclusion of wheelchair sports in society

Bangladesh Wheelchair Sports foundation (BWSF) organized its 3rd webinar 'Inclusion of wheelchair sports in society' on January 19, 2021, during COVID 19. The guest of the webinar was Mark Bullock (Adviser of inclusive sports development in the UK and former member of the International Paralympic games committee). The webinar was hosted by Muntasir Feroz (Director Management of Bangladesh Wheelchair Sports foundation ). After the greetings session, Mark said that they are on lockdown and trying their best to provide opportunities in different ways to keep disabled people active. When he was asked how did he start his journey and what inspired him to work with inclusion sports he said that he has been involved with inclusion sports for 30 years, he was a sports officer at the University of Nottingham where he got introduced to disability sports and at his first job he shared an office with a disabled person and they became friend, who was a sports development officer for people with disability and Mark was tennis sports officer and they worked on projects regarding tennis and that started him on his journey. When asked about his journey on Paralympic Committee he said that through his role at the International Tennis Federation he had very close links with the International Tennis Committee, so for a long time, he was on the International Paralympic Committee Sports Council representing wheelchair tennis attending assemblies as a delegate and then towards the end of his time at the International Federation he was nominated and accepted as a member of the International Paralympic Games Committee. When he was there, they were exploring the criteria that enabled sports to be part of the Paralympic program. When asked did he got any support from the society since he worked at the organizer end, he said that his country hosted London 2012 Paralympic games and there is a lot of support for the Paralympic movement since it was areal game-changer in terms of raising awareness so he got a lot of support for the work he is doing. When asked did he faces any challenge at present, he said that there will always be barriers , reflecting on his career he had spent his whole life trying to persuade people to do things a little bit more but there are still barriers like attitudinal barriers, in terms of providing opportunities for disabled people there are access barriers so a lot of sports clubs venues are not perhaps as accessible as they could be, also coaches confident being confident enough to work with disabled people. So there always be those little barriers and boundaries there, also he likes to see many more coaches feel confident enough to coach disabled people. When asked about the situation of inclusion of wheelchair sports in his country, he said that in his country wheelchair sports has quite a high profile, wheelchair basketball has quite a high profile, wheelchair rugby and also wheelchair tennis what he knows most about is played at Wimbledon so that gives it a platform, its shown on the BBC, so most people involved in tennis knows about wheelchair tennis and know it exists and a lot of tennis fans knows the names of the top wheelchair tennis players like Alfred Hewitt, Gordon Reed, Jordan Wiley, Lucy Shuker, Andrew Laptorn are all players that are known. So there is a lot of awareness and lot of work to be done to encourage more people to play and take up sports. When asked how much wheelchair users are willing to come forward to become wheelchair athletes, he said London 2012 Paralympic Games raised the profile and there is a lot of development activity, there is an inter-spinal unit game so he thinks if people have an accident and become injured there is an awareness of opportunities that are available which was not around 10 to 15 years ago, so overall awareness helps and there is much more to be done. When asked how sponsors support them to do events, he said that the governing bodies of sport there are very supportive there so a lot of the funding comes from governing bodies. When asked wheelchair users are willing enough to work in the organizing too, he said that lot of wheelchair users has engaged themselves in the decision-making process and that is how wheelchair sports has evolved in their country, athlete themselves organizing activity. When asked what is his final goal, he said that just continuing to strive to improve the opportunities that are available for people to play sports. In the end, when asked if he had any message for Bangladesh, he said that to stay positive in this difficult situation and for the athletes to make most of the situation and keep active and look at different ways of doing things.