This month two courses, organized by the World ParaVolley Sport Department, took place in Elblag, Poland. The courses were held with the excellent cooperation of IKS ATAK in parallel with the “ELBLAG CUP 2015” – SPRING EDITION.
One Course – an International Candidate Referee Course – was delivered by Pierre Farmer (VRC Secretary) as Course Director, with Janko Plesnik (Senior Referee and Official Referee Observer) as Instructor. The Course was attended by 11 students, all of them from Europe (4 from Poland and 1 from each one of the following countries: Azerbaijan, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Russia and Finland). Another 11 students (2 from Egypt, 1 from Gambia, 3 from Kenya, 2 from Rwanda and 3 from Uganda) proved eligible and were accepted to participate. Unfortunately the ParaVolley Africa candidates were unable to attend, for different reasons mainly related to finance and visa problems. World ParaVolley continues to develop female Technical Officials as a strategy for increasing female inclusion in ParaVolley. Three of the 11 students were female and this increases the number of the WPV International Referees to 22.

The second Course – an International Referee Delegates and Referee Observers Course – was directed by Gaby Lotan (PVRC Chairman). The Course was attended by 8 of World ParaViolley’s most experienced referees – 2 from ParaVolley Pan America, 3 from ParaVolley Asia Oceania and 3 from ParaVolley Europe. Unfortunately, the ninth candidate selected for the course – Khalid Shanisha from ParaVolley Africa was unfortunately declined a Polish visa and could not take part. This was the second ever Referee Delegates and Referee Observers Course and – together with the 5 from the first Course – there are now 13 qualified Referee Delegates/Observers ready to contribute in World ParaVolley Competitions.