17th mass sports conference held in Macau

The 17th Asian Mass Sports Association Seminar (ASFAA) took place last week at the Macau Royal Hotel, focusing on promoting parent-child relationships through mass sports. Keynote speakers from various organizations, both local and international, presented at the conference.

The event aimed to commemorate 17 years of international collaboration, discussion of the future of sports and the promotion of family bonds through sports.

In partnership with The Association for International Sport for All (TAFISA), the two-day conference covered topics such as bridging generations, enhancing parent-child relationships through mass sports and the benefits of parent-child sports for future generations.

The president of TAFISA, Wolfgang Baumann, emphasized the importance of parents in shaping children’s interest in sports.

“For me, parents are the number one educators for children in regards to sport for all. I can’t imagine any other entity that could do better. Why? Because we all know that the six years between zero and six are extremely important to shape the habits and the interests of a child.”

“School cannot do it alone. It needs active parents. Parents need to be educated. It’s not only important to play the piano or to learn any language, but also to do physical activity,” he remarked.

He also noted the behavior changes and trends seen by the sports community due to COVID-19, highlighting the popularization of more individual sports over organized team sports.

“There have been changes due to the COVID-19 crisis in sport. For example, what we can observe is that individual sports activities have increased.”

“In Germany, sports clubs were closed, people were looking for other opportunities. So we have a clear trend that individual sport in terms of walking, cycling, fitness training has increased. But I think this is a good development that we have the organized side of sport for groups, but also sports organized for individual.”

When asked why the conference was held in Macau, Bauman expressed his love for Macau and highlighted the city’s combination of innovation and tradition in sports.

“The ASFA board selected Macau to host this event because for many reasons, Macau is just a perfect place for this congress.” 

“As you know, Macau is excelling and has very innovative initiatives in sport … and Macau has this special feature of being a unified city, so to say. It’s very compact and for that reason, you have only very short distances here in Macau and helps you a little bit to connect school with parents, sport clubs with sport facilities” he stated. Staff Reporter