The conference is an OFC-driven event that brings together young people from across the region to meet, interact and discuss important issues.
The inaugural PYASC was successfully staged by OFC and a wide range of partners in Manukau, New Zealand, in March 2010 and OFC has joined forces with the New Caledonia government and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community to organise the second, which has been pencilled in to take place in Noumea during December 2013.
Despite the event still being two years away, there is much planning to be done and that task is well underway after the heads of delegation meeting in February was followed up by this week’s gathering.
The latest meeting, which took place on December 6 and 7, was facilitated by OFC Head of Social Responsibility Franck Castillo and attended by the heads of delegation from American Samoa, Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Tahiti, Tonga and Vanuatu, as well as PYASC Deputy CEO Sylvian Raffard-Artigue and Vivian Koster, Human Development Programme Officer (Youth) for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.
Castillo says it is necessary to bring together the heads of delegation as a successful PYASC would not be possible without the support of key people throughout the Pacific region.
“Each country’s government has appointed a head to coordinate their delegation, select participants and prepare them for the conference,” he explains. “We really need the support of all the countries to build up the event.”
Castillo believes it is vital that the main objective of the conference is well understood by all involved.
“We are talking about using sport as a tool for development which is still quite a new concept,” he says. “We need to be sure that when the heads of delegation go back to their countries they will talk to the young people and explain how sport can be used as a social development tool.”
There were also several other items on the agenda across the busy two days of discussion, relating mainly to the content of the conference and how it could help give the participants the skills needed to make a positive difference in their communities.
“It is not easy to organise such a big event and, for us, it’s more of an investment. When countries send participants, they invest in these young people to do concrete things,” Castillo says.
“So we’ve encouraged the heads to think about projects that could help life in the Pacific to be improved through sport. And if the young people are going to manage the projects, then the conference needs to give them the skills to do that.”
But Castillo says it is equally important that the right participants are chosen in the first place and ensuring this will be the case was another area discussed during the meeting.
“The selection criterion needs to be defined to make sure young people are sent who will learn effectively and be active after the conference. One of the aims of the conference is to improve the participants’ skills but there is a basic level that needs to be reached before we can begin.”
At the inaugural PYASC last year, funding was awarded to 14 sport for development projects. This week’s meeting presented the chance for the heads from the countries involved to provide an update on the progress made with their respective initiatives so far.
Castillo is looking forward to learning of their eventual outcomes at the next PYASC.
“It will be fantastic to see what some of the impacts of these projects have been,” he says. “They will be invited to come and present what they have done over the three years so we can see the true impact of sport for development.”

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