SAI celebrates International Women’s Day 

Sports Authority of India urges ‘invest in women’ mentality to prevail in all its centres

Khel Today Bureau

New Delhi: Sports Authority of India (SAI) celebrated the International Women’s Day on March 8, 2024 on a massive scale. SAI regional centres and 23 National Centres of Excellence (NCoE) organised a plethora of activities for their female staff, coaches and athletes. All activities were solely managed by women folks from different SAI centres.

The celebration began with the address of Smt Sujata Chaturvedi, Secretary (Sports), MYAS, addressing an entirely female audience through video conferencing. She also participated in the thought-provoking international webinar on the theme “Count her in: Invest in women, accelerate progress” in association with SAI LNCPE, Trivandrum.

“Women’s safety is of utmost importance and all the RCs and NCoEs need to adopt a pro-active approach for this. All RCs and NCoEs need to conduct self-defence workshops and mental health sessions for female staff, coaches and athletes on a regular basis and understand the challenges – be it emotional or socio-economic – they are facing. I would request every regional centre to invest in women, treat them with dignity and make them an essential part, and the women will then go on to achieve great things,” Smt Sujata Chaturvedi said.

Later, self-defence workshops, podcast on mental health and well-being, fun matches in disciplines like volleyball, football, table tennis, carrom, kabaddi and kho kho were organised along with recreational games like spoon race, musical chairs, blind hit, lagori and tug of war. The activities witnessed massive participation from women across all SAI centres. In addition to the entertainment, winners of various competitions also collected some cool prizes.