• Small Federations Committee (SFC)

    • During the "4th NBO Officers Meeting" in 2007 in Rome, Jean-Charles Allavena from Monaco took the first step towards the SFC. The SFC was officially created by President Rona and the EBL Board after the General Assembly of Antalya in June 2007.

    Small Federations were defined as NBO`s from small countries (Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco and San Marino) or NBO’s with less than around 500 members (13 to 15 at the moment).

    Three global goals were defined:

    • Increase participation in EBL competitions from Pau onwards. A Round-robin of fourteen days during the European Team Championship is in time and money to much for most small federations. The SFC asked the EBL to have a Round-robin in two lines and a Knock-out or a new Round-robin for those who qualify for the second round. The EBL has established this already in Pau and it will be continued in the future.

    • Have a representative of the small federations in the Board of the EBL. In Antalya some representatives of smaller NBO’s were candidates for the Board of the EBL, but were not elected. In future elections the SFC will try to have a representative of a small federation to be elected to the Board. Another alternative, if no SFC member is elected, might be for the Board to co-opt a member of the SFC as an extra Member of the Board, but without voting rights at meetings.

    • Define possible help programs for small federations. Except for the federations from very small countries, the federations from bigger countries are likely to grow. Especially the federations from the former Soviet and Yugoslavian Republic are newly established and need some help to set up their federation and getting new people interested in playing bridge. The EBL and the bigger federations are probably able to help them with non-financial help programs, as they have been successful themselves in having a federation running.

    Monaco took the initiative to organize the 1st Small NBO Games in Monte Carlo in 2007. Teams from 13 countries joined this first games and Bulgaria was the first winner. Lithuania is organizing the second games in Vilnius in September 2009.

    During the games in Monaco the SFC had its first official meeting. The goals were set and the committee agreed to hold an inquiry of the federations to have a better sight on their problems and wishes. The inquiry will take place in the first half of 2009.

    After the inquiry the committee has to work out a plan to actually help the smaller federations with concrete plans to help them. One of the possibilities is to have large federations adopt smaller federations to help and advise them to solve their problems. There are already good examples of bilateral help from Poland, Italy, France and the Netherlands, so we have only to copy this good work between other countries.

    The small federations committee:
    Jean-Charles Allavena (chairman)Monaco
    Pim Vaders (co-chairman)The Netherlands / EBL
    Mario DixMalta
    Kostandin KapoAlbania
    Jerry StamatovBulgaria
    Erikas VainikonisLithuania
    Svetlana BodrenkovaBelarus