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Vacancy: Chair IKF Development and Education Committee

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The International Korfball Federation seeks applications for the position of

 

Chair of the IKF Development and Education Committee and Member of the IKF Executive Committee

(volunteer position; up to 10 hours per week)

 

The International Korfball Federation’s development mission is to enable anyone in the world to play our mixed-gender team sport whenever and wherever they want. As a mixed-gender sport, we believe in the values of equality and opportunity, while the competitive game is seen as a target to aim for the best possible performance and international participation.

The development strategy for the next quadrennial aims at working with our 40 strongest national organisations among the current 70 members, in order to increase participation numbers, level of competition, and organisational strength. In addition, the remaining 30 young countries need basic developmental support. For this, the IKF, together with key partners such as the national korfball associations of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Chinese Taipei, and with financial assistance from the International Olympic Committee, runs a development and education program. This program is coordinated by the IKF Development and Education Committee.

Responsibilities

The Chair of the IKF Development and Education Committee, within the overall IKF Strategy, operationalises the development strategy and executes the development. Execution includes the administrative running of the program, including matters such as organising the call for project proposals, allocation and monitoring of projects, measuring and reporting on key performance indicators. Furthermore, the Chair leads the DEC team with members from across all continents. Using virtual meetings, the Chair inspires and leads the committee members, en helps them being successful in their continent. Within the DEC, a specific Coaching education team leads the development and innovation of korfball coaching courses worldwide.

Further, the DEC Chair is a Member of the IKF Executive Committee and hence shares responsibility for the overall decision making and management of the IKF.

Duties include:

  • Organising, planning, and monitoring of the IKF Development Program
  • Strategic planning of and reporting on the IKF Development Program
  • Aligning with key stakeholders, such as donors and beneficiaries of the program, and member organisations of the IKF
  • Seeking of funds and applying for grants to enlarge the size and impact of the IKF Development Program
  • Developing the IKF education program, including organising the course calendar, developing online education, and developing a global network of qualified instructors

Requirements:

  • Passion for mixed-gender team sports
  • Global orientation
  • Experience with sports development, ideally in korfball or a similar team sport
  • Excellent communication skills
  • Well-organized and meticulous
  • Advanced level of English, and ideally one or two additional global languages

Benefits:

  • Be part of the future development of korfball, and have a major influence on its course of development
  • Be part of all key decisions of the International Korfball Federation
  • Be able to develop a wonderful network of passionate sports developers across the globe
  • Expenses covered in accordance with the IKF reimbursement policies
  • Invitations to all IKF events

Position

The membership of the IKF Executive Committee is an elected position by the General Meeting of the IKF. Elections will be held in November 2021. Prior to this, the selected candidate will be co-opted as a full member of the IKF Executive Committee. Given the current background of the members in the IKF Executive Committee and IKF Council, candidates from the A-countries (Netherlands, Belgium, and Chinese Taipei) are not eligible for this position.

Following the IKF Statutes, a candidate needs to be (or become) a member of a national organisation that is a full member of the IKF. Associate Members may not propose candidates for the Membership of the IKF Executive Committee.

The position is a voluntary position and does not entail any salary or indemnification. Out-of-pocket expenses are covered insofar as needed to conduct the work.

Information

If you would like more information about this position, please contact the CEO of the IKF, Mr Tilbert La Haye (Tilbert.la.haye@ikf.org), or the Secretary General of the IKF Ms Joana Faria (joana.faria@ikf.org ).

Applications

Applications should include a detailed resume and a motivation letter, and should be sent to the IKF Office office@ikf.org . Review of applications will start on September 15, 2020, and continue until the position has been filled.

World Korfball Update – IKF newsletter

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The IKF has published the first edition of World Korfball Update, a newsletter to keep all korfball fans and national federations informed about IKF news and global korfball news.

The World Korfball Update will be published three to four times a year and features IKF organisational news, tournament flashbacks, interviews, development projects in the spotlight, and much more. You can download the first edition here, or go to www.korfball.sport/documents.

You can subscribe for the newsletter by sending an e-mail to office@ikf.org.

Follow our social media channels to make sure you do not miss any news:

► facebook.com/korfball.org
► twitter.com/korfball
► instagram.com/korfball_org

Revised IKF Competition Calendar 2021-2023

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The current worldwide corona crisis is having a major impact on the complete sports world and unfortunately, korfball is not an exception. Multiple IKF events already have been cancelled or postponed. Amongst these events are Elite events like; the AKC 2020, the EKC A&B 2020 and the U21 WKC 2020 and the World Games 2021.

While the impact of the cancellations and postponements goes beyond the year of 2020, the IKF had to revise the complete competition calendar for the coming years. This has led to the following major structural changes in the IKF competition calendar for 2021-2023:

  1. For the U21 events, we will move to a World Championship cycle of three years (Continental Championships in 2019, 2022 and 2023, and World Championships in 2021 and 2024). For the U21 WKC 2021 we will keep the same age reference dates as originally planned for in 2020.
  2. Due to having The World Games in 2022, and the European Championships in 2021, we have chosen not to play a European Championship in 2022. This serves to avoid having too many senior events in the same year. A number of teams (exact number to be determined later) in the European Championship A-Division in 2021 will qualify directly for the 2023 World Championship. Should the corona crisis develop next year such that a proper preparation for the European Championship Division-A is not possible, this decision regarding qualification may be reversed.
  3. The remaining European qualification places for the 2023 World Championship will be obtained in one or two European WKC Qualifier(s), to be played in 2022. Countries that have already qualified through the 2021 European Championship, hence are not playing in these Qualifiers.
  4. The European Championships Division-A 2021 and the WKC qualifying event(s) in 2022 will also decide which 14 countries directly qualify for the European Korfball Championship’s in 2024. The remaining two places will be contested at the IKF EKC Round 1 in 2023.

From 2023 onwards, the calendar will revert to the previously decided calendar. To this end, the IKF Exco has awarded the 2026 European Championship to the Czech Republic, due to the fact that the 2022 European Championship will not take place.

The exact continental qualification quota for the 2023 WKC will be determined by the IKF Council before the end of this year.

Here you find the Global Competition Overview and underneath you find the precise competition calendar for the coming three years.


2021 

Event Month Host Status
IKF Europa Cup (?) To be decided
IKF Europa Shield (?) To be decided
IKF U19 & U16 AK4C February Thailand
IKF U19 WKC 2-4 April Czech Republic Confirmed
EKC U15 June ??
KWC U17 June The Netherlands
IKF U21 EKC Round 1 June/July ??
IKF U21 WKC 10-17 July Chinese Taipei Confirmed
IKF AKC August Korea
IKF Beach Korfball WKC August ??
IKF Europa Cup Round 1 September ??
IKF EKC Division-B October Poland
IKF EKC Division A October-November Belgium

* The continuation of the European club competitions is currently examined. Ultimately the 1st of July 2020 a decision will be taken on how to proceed.

* The exact dates of most of the events are waiting final confirmation. Those will be communicated when finalised.

* U21 EKC Round 1: For the European countries that are not qualified for the IKF U21 WKC in Chinese Taipei 2021, the aim is to organise a three days event to qualify for the U21 EKC Final Round in 2022.

 

2022

Event Month Host Status
IKF PAKC January or December 2021 ??
IKF Europa Cup January ??
IKF Europa Shield January ??
IKF AAKC March/April ??
IKF U19 EKC (Open) April ??
IKF Asia U19 & U16 AK4C March/April ??
IKF U21 AOKC May or September ??
EKC U15 June ??
KWC U17 June The Netherlands
IKF U21 EKC Final Round June ??
World Games 13-17 July United States Confirmed
IKF AOKC August ??
IKF Beach Korfball (EU, AS, ?) August/? ??
IKF Europa Cup Round 1 September ??
IKF European WKC Qualifier(s) October/November ??

* PAKC: Depending on the bid of the host country the event will either be scheduled at the end of 2021 or at the beginning of 2022.

2023

Event Dates Host Status
IKF Korfball Champions League Satellite Final 27-28 January Catalonia Confirmed
IKF Korfball Champions League Challenger Final 4-5 February Germany Confirmed
IKF Korfball Champions League Final 10-11 February Netherlands Confirmed
IKF Beach Korfball World Cup (Asia) May
IKF U19 World Korfball Championship 7-9 April Belgium Confirmed
IKF U21 European Korfball Championship June
European Korfball Championship U15* June
Korfball World Cup U17* July
IKF Beach Korfball World Cup (Europe) 25-26 August Poland Confirmed
IKF Korfball Champions League Round 1 September
IKF World Korfball Championship 20-29 October Chinese Taipei Confirmed
IKF European Korfball Championship First Round November
IKF Korfball Champions League Round 2 November
* IKF patronaged event

 

While the effect on the competition calendar is substantial, the IKF Executive Committee believes to have found a reasonable balance between the quality of the international competition calendar, the burden on national federations and athletes, and the feasibility of the calendar given the many challenges that the IKF will be facing over the next few years.

Obviously, the further evolution of the current corona crisis is unclear, and new developments later this year or next year may force us to revise any of the decisions now made.

IKF Athletes Committee Survey

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The IKF Athletes Committee is asking all athletes that have participated at IKF events since August 2019 to give their feedback! The Athletes Committee represents all athletes and advises the IKF EXCO on athlete-related matters. The Athletes Committee wants to know more about your experiences during IKF events and therefore asks you to fill in a survey. This way, the committee can represent all korfball players in the best possible way. All feedback (good and bad) is appreciated!

Click here to go to the survey, completing it will only take a couple of minutes.

Last day to respond: 31st May 2020

You can also contact the IKF Athletes Committee (Jessica May, Ricky Wu & Davesh Patel) on athletes@ikf.org

IKF Social Media Call

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Are you interested to increase the IKF’s social and digital impact? 

If korfball is your passion and you have social media or other digital skills then you can help increase korfball’s global impact by volunteering your time and skills. 

Korfball is growing globally. With close to 70 member countries, korfball is part of many people’s daily lives, and korfball activities take place globally at any time of day. Over the past years, the IKF has built up a considerable presence in social and other web media and is one of the most innovative international federations in this domain. Live scoring on worldkorfball.sport, casting of IKF events on worldkorfball.sport and YouTube, extensive social media coverage of our events on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, a website as a repository of our official documents, and much more. 

The IKF would like to further develop its social media and digital presence. For social media we would like more impact during our events, coverage of other events, and more presence in between events. In terms of information provisioning, we would like to collect and share more of our data and provide interesting graphs, analyses, and social content. We would like to inform interested korfball fans better and in a more personalized way. And of course we are interested to further develop the experience of viewers of our webcasts. 

For this, we would like to put together a pool of volunteers that can help us. These volunteers can be any of the following (but definitely not limited to this list): 

  • Social media writer/producers 
  • Video producer, director, etc 
  • Social media editors 
  • Software developers 
  • Data scientists 
  • Journalists, interviewers, reporters (social and other electronic media) 
  • …. (fill in what you think the IKF and the global korfball community needs) 

If you are interested, or if you would like to know more, please send us an email with your name and contact details.  

Please send your application or expression of interest before 6 May 2020 to the IKF Office: office@ikf.org. For further information contact the IKF CEO Tilbert La Haye: tilbert.la.haye@ikf.org. 

Note: This is a call for volunteers. We do not solicit commercial applications for service provisions. Please refrain from developing any commercial proposal based on this text. 

The World Games in Birmingham (USA) moves to July 2022

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The International World Games Association (IWGA) and Birmingham Organising Committee (BOC) have agreed to postpone the 11th edition of The World Games until 7th to 17th July 2022. The Games had originally been planned to take place from 15–25 July next year.

The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision to move the Tokyo Olympic Games to July 2021 made a significant impact on the planning of The World Games in Birmingham, Alabama. Keeping to the original dates in July 2021 would have meant excluding many athletes and officials involved in the Olympics, and would have led to a potential reduction in public and media interest. When the IOC announced its decision, the BOC urgently set about assessing what alternative dates might be viable, particularly as regards venues and accommodation. Meanwhile, the staff of the IWGA were establishing when the vital services provided by key partners, such as SwissTiming and International Sports Broadcasting, could still be made available.

It soon became clear that only one 10-day period existed in which venues, accommodation and key partner support could be guaranteed: 7–17 July 2022. The IWGA Member Federations with sports on the programme gave their full support to delaying The World Games, and the joint decision of the IWGA and BOC Boards to adopt these new dates was unanimously approved by the federations in a video conference.

Jan Fransoo: “The IKF understands and fully supports the decision made by the IWGA and BOC to postpone the World Games until 2022, and has full confidence that the 2022 Games will be a great celebration of sports. With the Olympic Games being moved to 2021this was the most viable option to do justice to the Games in Birmingham. The IKF would like to expresses its gratitude towards everyone involved within the IWGA and BOC for the quick acting after the announcement of the IOC. Having the new dates for the event available creates clarity and enables us to look at the consequences of this decision for the international korfball competions calendar. The IKF Executive Committee will meet within the next few days to discuss the impact of the new dates for The World Games on the IKF competition calendar for 2020-2023. Also other effects of the current corona crisis will be part of that discussion.”

Event info: www.twg2022.com – www.korfball.sport/event/the-world-games-2022

Bob de Die, IKF Honorary Life President, passes away

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It is with great sadness that the International Korfball Federation has learnt of the passing of Bob de Die, Honorary Life President of the IKF and recipient of the Olympic Order, at the age of 86 at his residence in the Netherlands, in the company of his wife Margareth.

Bob de Die will be remembered as the sixth President of the International Korfball Federation, serving at the helm of the governing body of the world’s exclusively mixed gender team sport from 1988 until 2003. During his Presidency, the IKF obtained recognition by the Global Association of International Sports Federations and later by the International Olympic Committee. During his vice-presidency, from 1981 until 1988, the korfball entered into the program of the World Games. From 1993 until 2005 he also served as Senior Vice-President of the International World Games Association. Bob was truly engaged with the development of the sport, having a particular impact on the development of the international competition calendar and the embedding in international multi-sports bodies.

Bob de Die was active as a korfball administrator during his entire life, always as a volunteer. Already at the age of 13, he joined the Executive Committee of his local korfball club in Leiden. In 1969, he became a member of the Executive Committee of the Royal Netherlands Korfball Association. Bob was instrumental in establishing the merger of two rivaling national korfball associations in the Netherlands in 1973, bringing about a single governing body for korfball in the Netherlands, with close to 100,000 registered members. During a considerable part of his membership of the Royal Netherlands Korfball Association Executive Committee, he assumed the office of Vice-President.

Bob was awarded the Honorary Life Presidency of the International Korfball Federation upon his retirement in 2003. At that time, he was also awarded the Olympic Order for his extensive service of many decades to the Olympic Movement. He was also an Officer in the Knighthood of Orange-Nassau, and a Honorary Life Member of the Royal Netherlands Korfball Association. In 2005, he received the GAISF Award for his service to sports.

After his retirement, Bob remained following the development of korfball and The World Games closely. After his health deteriorated and he was unable to leave home, he was an avid watcher of korfball matches from all over the world via livestream on his computer. In the meantime, he kept in touch with many fellow korfball and world games administrators from his generation through frequent emails. Always positive and constructive, always looking forward to help develop sports.

Jan C. Fransoo, current IKF President: “Bob de Die brought me into the International Korfball Federation as a volunteer administrator and later on convinced me to take on the job as Secretary General in 1997. From that period onwards, he has had a major impact on my development as a sports administrator. I will remember him for his positive and realistic outlook, and for ensuring me that good governance is what matters across sports. We wish his wife, children and grandchildren lots of strength in going through this difficult period.”

Due to current restrictions, the funeral will be in a small family setting. We will later have the opportunity to celebrate Bob’s life.

 

The picture shows Bob de Die receiving the GAISF Award in 2005 after his retirement from the IWGA Executive Committee. The Award was presented by GAISF President Verbruggen and witnessed by IWGA President Froehlich

IKF WKC 2019: List of referees and jury officers

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The IKF is happy to announce the list of referees and jury officers appointed for the upcoming IKF World Korfball Championship 2019 that will be held from 1 to 10 August in Durban, South Africa.

JURY OFFICERS:

Breugelmans, Marc (BEL)
Dijkstra, Gert (NED)
Faria, Joana (POR)
Kuo-Chin Han, Esther (TPE)
van Heerden, Suzette (RSA)
Kumkevera, Roseline (ZIM)
Van der Linde, Theo (NED)
Piris, Nina (CAT)
R. de O. Silva, Alexandre (BRA)
Sjardijn, Jan (NED)
Stevenson, Sam (SCO)

REFEREES:

referees_wkc2019

 

The match schedule and more information about this tournament can be found on the following link: https://korfball.sport/event/ikf-world-korfball-championship-2/#tab-id-2

All #WKC2019 matches will be live-streamed through IKF YouTube channel and on IKF’s data website: www.worldkorfball.sport

For more information about the event, follow www.korfball.sport and IKF Social Media profiles:
– On Facebook: @korfball.org
– On Instagram: @korfball_org
– On Twitter: @korfball

IKF Korfball World Congress 2019

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The next IKF Korfball World Congress will take place on August 7 and August 8 in the Garden Court Marine Parade Hotel, Durban, South Africa, during the IKF World Korfball Championship 2019.

This year’s edition of the congress aims to promote the sharing of experiences and ideas among members focusing on two main themes: Global Korfball Development and Strengthening Our National Organisations.

The registration for the IKF Korfball World Congress is still open until July, 8th 2019 and it must be done by email to office@ikf.org

You can consult the detailed program of the IKF Korfball World Congress here.