As part of the objectives and strategies established for the new 2017-2020 Olympic Solidarity plan, an IOC Olympic Solidarity delegation composed of members of the Lausanne and the European Continental Offices went to Kosovo last week.

One of the major innovations of this new plan is to further strengthen the mission of Olympic Solidarity: organise assistance to the National Olympic Committees, in particular those with the greatest need.

To achieve this objective, during the two-day visit to Pristina, OS Deputy Director Pamela Vipond and Gianluca De Angelis from the OS Continental Office in Rome applied a new concept of NOC mentoring, consisting of tailor-made, individualised support to the Kosovo Olympic Committee, to help them to take full advantage of all the opportunities available through the Olympic Solidarity programmes.

NOC President Besim Hasani and his team gave their guests a very warm welcome, doing everything possible to allow them to fully analyse the situation regarding sport in Kosovo, and see how to best exploit opportunities for improvement.

In addition to the various meetings at the NOC Headquarters, the OS delegates were asked to give lectures at a seminar entitled “Basic Course for Sport Administrators” that the Kosovo Shooting Federation had organised on the same dates, within the framework of the Federations tutoring programme set out by the Kosovar NOC.

The Olympic Solidarity NOC Mentoring programme will be enriched by various follow-ups to monitor implementation and progress made, with the aim of assisting the Kosovo NOC to better capitalise on all the technical and financial support available through both the Olympic Solidarity world and continental programmes.