e-Debate: Jan Rijpstra shares his thoughts in Round 3

Do you consider it still a ‘taboo’ to talk openly of mistakes or ‘what went wrong’ in S&D programmes? How do you propose overcoming this challenge?

In my opinion, it should not be a “taboo” because you have to face it when things go wrong.

Unfortunately a lot of attention is always paid  to mistakes. Newsmagazines, TV and the Internet often put the mistakes in the headlines.

It’s better for an organisation to speak openly about things that went wrong. At the same time, it’s important to tell what the consequences for an organisation are and in what way they will change their strategy in a new case.

Be honest about what went right and what went wrong. I think that organisations have to tell each other about mistakes and failures so that in the future the same mistakes can be prevented.

What three active measures do you recommend the S&D community to take as a collective in the next 3-5 years to address the biggest challenges outlined earlier in the discussion?

1. Show what you do and what the results of what you are doing more. Don't only publish in your “self fulfilling prophecy” magazines and websites! Also make use of opinion magazines/papers, glossy magazines and information magazines/papers which are read by millions of people. Use the forums on the Internet as well.
    
2. Organise a center/body of knowledge on S&D in each country (in both donor and recipient countries) and develop educational studies on S&D in colleges and universities. Make a network around one, two or three centers of knowledge in developing countries, together with a few centers of knowledge from donor countries.
    
3. Encourage well-known sportswomen and sportsmen to adopt S&D. Encourage sportsmen and sportswomen from developing countries to partner up with their collegues from donor countries. They can also be linked to the centers of knowledge. The international sports world will be obliged to develop the policy for S&D in cooperation with the network of centers of knowledge.

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