President’s Message October 2014 from WDGF board on Vimeo.

Transcript:

Hello. My name is Simeon Hart and I am from England. In July of this year, the World Deaf Golf Championship was held in America where I was elected as their new President from the current year of 2014 to 2018. Wow!!

I am extremely happy to be nominated and elected for this post. The work of the previous President, and the work of the board overall has been commendable and I want to continue this good work with even more achievements.

I want to see the World Deaf Golf Federation as a stronger, more powerful entity which can be seen by the outside world on their journey to success.

I would like to pass on some news updates with regards to the work that has been done from July up until now. This December, the WDGF will meet the R&A and the IGF (International Golf Federation). The IGF have a focus on the Olympics. After having a meeting with one of the seniors from the IGF, I will be in touch with the ICSD to make contact re: Golf being involved in the Deaflympics’s 2021 so we shall see how this progresses.

The meeting with the R&A was to discuss how and what support they can offer the WDGF in terms of improvements to our championships, website and how we can translate the rules of Golf into International Sign, making them more accessible on the website. Hopefully, we will have more news on this and also the progress with the Deaflympics in the New Year.

When I was elected as President, I made it clear that my aim is to increase the amount of female Deaf golfers playing the game. We currently have Deaf males and Deaf male seniors and I want this to run in parallel with a female group, and female seniors. The aim to expand could take 5 – 10 years. I feel that this range of participation will make us much stronger. We struggle in the various countries with finding Deaf females to participate but I think the aim should be to encourage Deaf younger girls to be enthusiastic about the game; this therefore offers learning and development and in 5-10years time, hopefully, attracts them to the WDGF. This is something that I see as very positive for the WDGF with regards to its expansion. I want to see more females involved in Denmark 2016.

I am currently in discussions with contacts in Denmark which is progressing well and if this continues to do so and plans are made, we can sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and continue forward. These are exciting times and I would be very happy to see the WDGF in Denmark in 2016.

I would like to ask all the participating countries to give us regular updates about all things Golf in your areas. Any competitions, any updates, any country to country competitions or club to club competitions, any regional competitions; it does not matter what the news is, I would like to be able to upload this onto the website for all the participating countries to see and we can therefore keep in touch with what others are doing.

Lastly, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I will be back in 2015 with the mentioned updates.

Thank you