By Geordie Moss:
It has been just over a month since my last post and it’s crazy to think how much has happened in that short period of time. As mentioned in my last post, we were on the back-end of hosting our second site visit from our third CGA, and as Luke mentioned in his earlier post, we’ve had two other site visits from representatives from Team Scotland and Team Barbados.
Myself and Luke with Gail Craig-Archer, Team Representative from Barbados. at the Breezes Hotel
Since these two countries fall under my CGA delegation, it was my responsibility to organize most of the logistics involved in the site visit. This meant producing the two-day agenda, contacting the Facility Manager of all the competition venues in order to organize tours of each, organizing a meeting with the Games’ Head Doctor, and contacting the representatives from the Athlete’s Village Hotels in order to organize a tour of each. There were no hiccups in the schedule and all the representatives were very pleased with their visit, so I believe it was an overall success! This was a great experience for me as it tested my organizational skills – with regards to my ability to prioritize events during each day and ensure seamless transitions between such events – as well as my communication skills with high-level representatives. We are expecting Team Nigeria next month which falls under Luke’s CGA delegation, so it will be his turn to be charged with organizing their itineraries, which I know he will do an amazing job at!
As part of the legacy of the Commonwealth Youth Games within the Bahamas, our marketing team has designed an Ambassador Program to help share the many benefits the Youth Games embodies with the local schools in New Providence. Each school within the region will be assigned a country in which they will become ambassadors for during the Games, in the hopes of not only growing the interest around the Games, but also to allow students to learn first-hand about countries they may have never heard about from people who are actually from those countries.
Myself and Luke speaking at C.V. Bethel High School during the announcement of their partnership with the Canadian Team
This is an amazing program and myself and Luke were extremely honoured and humbled to serve as Canadian Ambassadors during the announcement of C.V. Bethel High School’s partnership with the Canadian Commonwealth Youth Games Team. This was our first public-speaking appearance since coming to the Bahamas, so I would be lying if I said we didn’t have some nerves before addressing the audience (it also didn’t help that it was being recorded!). We weren’t asked to speak for that long; they mostly wanted us to express how excited we are as Canadian citizens to be accepted into the C.V. Bethel community and speak about the importance of these programs in growing sport beyond the stadiums. The Head Boy of the school also spoke at the announcement, who I’m predicting will be the Prime Minister of the Bahamas in around 20 years as he was extremely mature and well-spoken for his age! The announcement ended with the children of the school surprising us with friendly greetings and a “Go Canada Go!” chant which brought massive smiles to our faces. Pictures and videos from this day can be found on the Commonwealth Youth Games Instagram account: @bahamas2017CYG.
Last week we also had our first sponsorship event, in which we invited local sponsors to the Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium for a night of information and presentations regarding the Youth Games and all that they can benefit from if they decide to sponsor this amazing event. The night was a huge success and ended with a great announcement that BTC (Bahamas Telecommunications Company) will be the title sponsor of the event and will broadcast the event to all BTC phones during the Games for free! This will allow the Games to reach a much greater local market!
‘Who’s Next?’ The main marketing campaign focused around who will be the next athletes to compete in the Youth Games
Drumeco Archer (Head of Marketing) addressing the audience at the Sponsorship Event
On a personal note, we have continued to enjoy our time here in paradise! I will keep this section very short as I have gone into grave detail in the above sections, but as Luke mentioned in his post, we were very fortunate to travel to the island of Eleuthera last month with our boss Romell. You can refer to his post for most of the information regarding our trip, but I will leave you with these images from our weekend away!
The 1648 Restaurant where we dined one of the nights
They somehow trusted me with the grill!
Catching the sunset on the Western side of the island
Lastly, we are scheduled to speak on a radio show next week to talk about the Youth Games and our experience in the Bahamas to date. Who knows, I might be a celebrity the next time you hear from me!
Until next time,
Geordie