JPA directors building apex regional para organisation

The Americas Paralympic Committee (APC), the regional governing body for Paralympic sports for North, South and Central America and the Caribbean with a membership of 33 countries, has gained autonomy from the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), the global apex body.

The APC will now assume full ownership and delivery of senior and junior para regional games. In previous years, the IPC managed and sponsored those games, but after a period of several discussions and negotiations, the regional events have fallen to the APC and directors of the Jamaica Paralympic Association (JPA) are playing an instrumental role in history making.

President of the Jamaica Paralympic Association (JPA), Christopher Samuda, and JPA Directors Ryan Foster, Carmen Patterson, and Winfield Boban are committing their professional expertise and experience to building the new APC.

Samuda, an attorney-at-law, is an APC Executive Board Director and will spearhead legal and corporate governance affairs while Foster, a chartered accountant, will, as co-chairman of the Finance Commission, pilot the financial viability and fortunes of the regional body. Patterson, a corporate communications specialist, will join regional experts in delivering the brand and marketing strategies and activations of the APC, and Boban will bring to the educational portfolio his knowledge and experience gained, particularly as a practitioner in rehabilitation management and prosthetics.

The IPC, the global governing body, delivers every four years the world’s largest multisport para event, the Paralympic Games, which, this year, will take place in Paris, France, from August 28 to September 8. The Santiago 2023 Para Pan American Games, which was held in Chile from November 17 to 26, witnessed the IPC’s last ownership of the games.

Commenting on the historic role Jamaica will play, Samuda said: “It is in our sporting DNA to construct, for the able with a difference, the present and future based on values in the hope that our work and that of our colleagues will birth an apex regional sporting body of probity, which history will record as revolutionary and visionary.”

Foster advocates the imperative of a sound financial framework and base and gives a clear signal of what the approach will be.

“The substructure of any organisation is crucial to the profitability of its superstructure and frugal management of expenses, innovative investment, and revenue strategies as well as disciplined treasury operations are the foundation of success,” Foster said.

With the APC assuming ownership, there will be “a dominant focus on establishing and monetising international partnerships and commercialising proprietary rights and games’ media broadcast rights” Samuda said.

Games are the lifeblood of governing regional and international bodies, and Foster makes the case that “APC will be to its stakeholders more than a breath of fresh air as it will represent for them the very essence and excellence of para sports”.