In Panama, a safe sport office with a voice and, more, a place to be heard
Eileen Coparropa is probably the most famous Olympic athlete in Panama’s recent history. She not only swam at three straight Games — 1996, 2000, 2004 — but at each of those Olympic Games was her country’s Opening Ceremony flag-bearer.
So, when the sports lawyer Damaris Young was elected in May 2021 as the first female President of the NOC of Panama, it was natural to reach out to Coparropa, who is now based in the United States, an executive for a worldwide renowned coffee chain.
What, Young asked, should be our priority? If there is one thing you must do, Coparropa said — please implement, and as soon as possible, an office devoted to safeguarding. “So,” Young said, “we have put together everything we could put together to help, basically.”
The mission? To educate about and thus deter if not prevent sexual abuse and harassment. But, also, to help create an environment in which athletes, coaches and others can constructively explore issues around mental health.
The “Safe Sport Office of the NOC of Panama” is run by a full-time director, Maria Carla Sayavedra. “She’s invited now to talk about [these issues],” Young said. “Now we have a voice. We are a voice.”
The initiative in Panama comes as the IOC — through a working group called Prevention of Harassment and Abuse in Sport — has been increasingly focused on helping NOCs and international federations develop policies to prevent harassment and abuse.
Talking the talk? Sure. But in, say, Panama, where the NOC must itself underwrite all activities — it gets no government funding — what priorities truly count as priorities?
“We really need to be strategic,” Young said. Which spotlights all the more the importance of the Panama safe sport initiative. “We create an impact … and we make a change,” she said.
By the end of the second year, Young said, officials expect through various workshops to have reached 1,000 people connected to Panamanian sports — at the South American Youth Games, Pan American Youth Games, Bolivarian Games, South American Games, Central American Games and, finally, the Central American and Caribbean Beach Games.
“Every time we’ll take a delegation, they will come to the NOC to come to the Safe Sport office to explain, for instance, what ‘consent’ means,” Young said.
Progress? Indisputably. More to go? No question, including the next stage: development of an adjudicatory process. A measure that would create such a process, Young said, is under consideration in Panama’s National Assembly.
Meanwhile, she said, the safe sport office is not just a first step. It’s the key. “To me,” she said, “this is the important thing. “It has created, first of all, an awareness that if it’s not right, you should say something. “Second, people know there is somewhere to go now. “Everyone knows now: ‘I can be heard.’”