Funded by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, organised by the Department of Health and Physical Education (HPE) of The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), supported by Action Sports Foundation Limited, Hong Kong China Dragon Boat Association, Hong Kong China Rugby, Hong Kong, China Tennis Association and Hoops for Hope Basketball Asia, the Jockey Club Sports Empowering Programme Sports Experience Day 2023 was held at C.C.C. Heep Woh Primary School (Cheung Sha Wan) on 9 December 2023. The event aims to cultivate the positive sports learning atmosphere, and provide public education on the importance of a motivational environment in youth sports participation, through a myriad of sports trials and programme exhibition.
The event attracted more than 400 participants to join. By providing challenging sports experiences, the youth can develop an interest in sports, and increase the public’s awareness of Empowering CoachingTM and Sport Characters education. Up to present, 17 tutors from the 5 Sports Partners have participated in a 30-hour workshop and have also trained 131 sport coaches with the Empowering CoachingTM principles and Sport Characters building. The trained sports coaches have organised sports training workshops for over 700 youth. These workshops aim to arise public awareness of the importance of building youth’s positive characters, as well as create a positive youth sports environment.
The Jockey Club Sports Empowering Programme is the city’s first large-scale sports coaching programme integrating sports character education (i.e. Confidence, Leadership, Resilience, Mental toughness and Social inclusion). By the end of the 3-year programme, it is expected that 250 coaches would be trained; 4,000 youths would join the sports training led by the trained coaches; and over 5,000 youth sports personnel such as coaches and parents would have completed an online course about Sport Characters education.
For more details, please visit the EdUHK.
On September 17, 2023, “The Way We Are” Commercial Radio Hong Kong Radio broadcast, hosted by Miss Nicole Wong, featured an interview on the Sport for Character Building Education Programme (SCB@EdUHK). The interviewees included Dr. Leung Ka Man, Assistant Professor, Mr. Chan Ching Yat, Senior Lecturer I from Health and Physical Education Department, The Education University of Hong Kong (HPE EdUHK), Mr. Leung Kwok Shing, the Founder from Hoops for Hope Basketball Asia, and Ms. Kitty Yau, the Tutor from Action sports foundation. The discussion is revolved how SCB@EdUHK promotes the youth character building, including resilience, social inclusion, leadership, confidence and mental toughness. The interview shed light on how EdUHK collaborates with five partner organizations to deliver this program. Mr. Leung also shared his experiences and insights gained through workshops and the positive learning outcomes of the programme. Ms. Yau mentioned that she has provided with a comprehensive understanding of the programme’s benefits and the transformative potential it holds for Sport character development in youth.
For the full interview, please refer the link: https://campaign.881903.com/hkjc-charities/
Thanks to The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust’s funding, the Department of Health and Physical Education (HPE) of The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) has launched the Jockey Club Sports Empowering Programme – the city’s first large-scale sports coaching programme integrating character education – with the support of Action Sports Foundation, the Hong Kong China Dragon Boat Association, Hong Kong Rugby Union, the Hong Kong Tennis Association and Hoops for Hope Basketball Asia.
EdUHK held a kick-off ceremony today (4 March) on its Tai Po campus, attracting more than 1,000 sports practitioners, academics, parents and students. Officiating at the ceremony were EdUHK President Professor Stephen Cheung Yan-leung, Acting Head of HPE Dr Andy Tse Choi-yeung, Chief Curriculum Development Officer of the Education Bureau Curriculum and Quality Assurance Branch Ms Annie Wong Hing-yee, Executive Manager of Charities (Sports and Culture) of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Ms Donna Tang, Legislative Council Member Hon Vincent Cheng Wing-shun, and Manager of Hong Kong Athletes Career and Education Programme Mr Man Yue-hin.
To cultivate a conducive sports environment for young people, EdUHK has been adopting an “Empowering Coaching™” theory from the University of Birmingham. Apart from enhancing students’ skills and performance, the objectives of the three-year programme are to help coaches understand their students’ psychological needs, and develop empowering and enjoyable strategies to motivate them. In an empowering environment, students should be able to develop five positive attributes: self-confidence, leadership, resilience, mental toughness and social inclusion.
To date, 17 tutors from EdUHK’s five partner associations have been trained with the empowering principles. They in turn become trainers for 250 sports coaches in their affiliated associations. Online training courses are also offered to over 5,000 sports practitioners, educators and parents.
Expressing his gratitude to all partner associations, Professor Cheung said, “We believe the programme will help encourage students and members of the public to take part in sports, while building the positive characters of teenagers. This is in line with the Government’s commitment to promoting sports in the community.”
As part of the programme, the EdUHK team also conducted a survey of over 650 respondents, aged between 11 and 16, to examine the effectiveness of empowering coaching. According to Dr Carman Leung Ka-man, Project Coordinator and Assistant Professor of HPE, the results show that youngsters will more likely engage in and enjoy sports if their coaches value their efforts, provide them with more choices, and empower them with a sense of support from the community.
For the related information, please click the link from EdUHK:
EdUHK Launches Jockey Club Sports Empowering Programme
Five 18-hour SCB@EdUHK Workshops for Coaches were held successfully from December 2022 to April 2023.
Seventeen sports coaches (tutors) from 5 partnered organisations participated in the 30-hour SCB@EdUHK Workshops for Tutors in late 2022. Then, in December 2022 – April 2023, the tutors delivered the concepts of Empowering Coaching™ and Sport Character Building to 76 coaches in the 18-hour face-to-face practical sessions.
By introducing Empowering Coaching™ and Sport Character Building, coaches equipped the above knowledge and skills to build 5 Sport Characters among youth athletes which are Affective Learning, Confidence, Resilience & mental toughness, Social inclusion and Leadership. Moreover, our project team observed and assisted the tutors during these coach workshops. Feedback was given as well.
These coach workshops ended with a consultation session in which tutors shared the difficulties they encountered and the teams from EdUHK and University of Birmingham gave the team suggestions and directions on how to apply the learned materials in their coaching practices.
The 30-hour SCB@EdUHK Workshops for Tutors came to a close in December 2022.
Seventeen sports coaches (tutors) from 5 partnered organisations participated a series of workshops, including both online (9 hours in total) and face-to-face sessions (15 hours in total) from September to October. The online workshops focused on Empowering Coaching and they were designed and led by the Empowering CoachingTM team from the University of Birmingham with assistance by the project teams of EdUHK and National Taiwan Normal University. EdUHK then led the face-to-face sessions which focused on the implementation of Sport Character Building. Details are available at Successfully held Workshops for Tutors marked the first milestone of SCB@EdUHK.
Later in November and December 2022, participating tutors completed their self-study and practice delivery session. In the practice delivery session, tutors coached sports coaches with the concepts of Empowering Coaching in order to build up autonomy, sense of belonging and competence among youth sport athletes. Also, our project team observed and gave feedback to tutors during the practice delivery session so as to build up their confidence and encourage them to make use of what they had learnt in their upcoming coach workshops.
The tutor workshop was ended with a consultation session. In this consultation session, tutors shared the difficulties they encountered and the teams from University of Birmingham and EdUHK gave suggestions and directions about applying Empowering Coaching ideas in their coaching practices.
The tutor workshops of Sport for Character Building Education Programme (SCB@EdUHK) were successfully held in September and October 2022. 15 tutors from 5 partnered sports associations participated in these workshops that aim at enabling tutors to create a motivating sporting environment and thus promote character building among youth in Hong Kong.
The tutor workshops are designed into 2 parts. The first part consisted of three 3-hour online training sessions conducted by the Empowering CoachingTM team of University of Birmingham with assistance from EdUHK and National Taiwan Normal University. Participants learnt about the major principles, theoretical background and evidence of empowering coaching. They also had the opportunity to discuss the implementation of these strategies in youth sport coaching.
The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) is responsible for the second part. It focused on practical coaching strategies, including affective learning, sports character building, and debriefing. Participating tutors were introduced to coaching techniques in the 15-hour face-to-face sessions. These techniques are helpful for building confidence, leadership, mental toughness, and resilience in youth through sports. Social inclusion was also highlighted, and youth with special educational needs (SEN) were invited to work with tutors as a practical coaching experience.