Oceania National Olympic Committees secretary general Ricardo Blas hopes the Secretaries General Workshop in Guam will cover a number of important issues ©ONOC

Ricardo Blas, secretary general of the Oceania National Olympic Committees (ONOC) and President of the Guam National Olympic Committee (GNOC), are set to host the ONOC Secretaries General Workshop in Guam. 

The purpose of the ONOC Secretaries General Workshop, which is scheduled to open today and conclude Friday (March 11), is to create approaches on the delivery of sport funding and programmes for all athletes in the Pacific Islands.

In addition, the workshop will be followed by an overnight trip to the Northern Marianas to visit the venues and meet the Organising Committee of the 2022 Pacific Mini Games in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands and scheduled to begin on June 17. 

"This Workshop is different because for the first time, we’re also bringing in finance officers, sport development officers, and sport education officers from our NOCs for specialist training to improve implementation of the Olympic Solidarity Programme in the Pacific Islands," Blas said.

Countries attending the ONOC Secretaries General Workshop in Guam are also set to take an overnight trip to inspect preparations for the 2022 Pacific Mini Games in Saipan ©Saipan 2022
Countries attending the ONOC Secretaries General Workshop in Guam are also set to take an overnight trip to inspect preparations for the 2022 Pacific Mini Games in Saipan ©Saipan 2022

Despite previously being held at least once every four years, the last ONOC Secretaries-General Workshop was held on Guam in 2017 and since then has been delayed by a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"My challenge was to work under protocols and whether I would get the acceptable number of close to half of our members to the table in person, and we deliver a hybrid workshop," Blas said. 

“We are behind by two-and-a-half years already and I’m taking into consideration even before the Tokyo Games, NOCs who struggle to make use of the funds available." 

"Taking these experiences, our team decided to design this Workshop to enable the joint planning of the delivery of the Olympic Solidarity Programme, so we’ll look at sharing of learnings through NOC case studies to enable exchange,” he said. 

"I am confident we will succeed because the key support team in any NOC to support the secretary general in the delivery of programmes will all be here on Guam with other members joining online, and we will work out solutions to improve from our lessons learned."

The ONOC Secretaries General Workshop, chaired by Ricardo Blas, centre right, will be attended by seven NOCs in person with eight logging on remotely ©ONOC
The ONOC Secretaries General Workshop, chaired by Ricardo Blas, centre right, will be attended by seven NOCs in person with eight logging on remotely ©ONOC

Out of the 15 Pacific Island National Olympic Committees in Oceania, seven will be attending in person and eight joining the event online, including NOCs of American Samoa, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Australia and New Zealand are set to join the ONOC Annual General Assembly in May, which this year will be held in Nadi, Fiji and is due to have the International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach present.