NSC Commissioner, Carl Schafer introduced the workshop and workshop facilitator, Geoff Thompson, and explain the back to the day. The developmental workshop has been convened as part of the Youth Charter’s twelve years of work in the Southern Africa Region and Africa as a whole. In particular, this workshop had come at an important time as the National Sports Commission was currently reviewing its strategic position and preparing a developmental and strategic plan for sport into the future that includes exploring its social development policies and the role sport could and should play in a social context and within communities.
 
Mr Schafer welcomed the opportunity resulting from this visit and hoped that the day would see the expertise available utilized for the future policy aims and objectives of the Commission. Mr Schafer concluded that this developmental workshop was the pre-cursor to a full social coach seminar workshop, which would see Namibia host Zone 6 member countries in 2007. The Chief Administrator of the Commission consulted and informed the Minister of Sport (MNSYSC), the Director of Sport within the ministry and other departments who were in full support of this approach.
 
Geoff introduced the Youth Charter Philosophy surrounding the Social Coach workshops and the aims and objectives of the workshops. Geoff discussed the Youth Charter’s 12 years of work in Namibia and Southern Africa and the resulting Magglingen Conferences in 2003 and 2005 in Switzerland. As a result, the Youth Charter has been successfully funded by the Swiss Development Agency to put in place a social coach programme. This would see the training of 100 social coaches in the Zone 4 Southern African region.