Do you want to hear from four women in the sport of boccia? Eileen Bartlett, Mila Wong, Sylvie SauvĂ©, and Tara Chisholm will join Conversations With Women in Boccia on May 26th and engage in an open discussion about their experiences as women in development positions. Their successes and challenges will be revealed in this amazing one hour event. The panel discussion will start at 16:00 EST and a Question and Answer period will be included at the end. Vanessa Wallace from Canadian Women and Sport will help guide the discussion as moderator. Biographies on the panel are below.Â
May / Mai 2021
26
As Program Coordinator at Canadian Women & Sport, Vanessa is focused on the retention of girls in sport in Canada. Vanessa is a former varsity basketball player for the University of Toronto and now uses her passion and experience to teach life skills through sport at Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment LaunchPad.
Eileen became involved with boccia as Director of Programs at Easter Seals Newfoundland and Labrador. She began as a community leader and progressed onto becoming a certified referee, a technical delegate, and a program organizer at the provincial level. Nationally, she sits on the Boccia Canada Council as Chair of Participation and Development, and internationally she sits on the Development Committee of World Boccia.
Mila came to Canada from the Philippines as a Registered Nurse and stayed in Canada because of its welcoming culture. She was the first female immigrant to become a City Councillor in Sudbury. She has been the Executive Director at the Sudbury Developmental Services for two decades. She was a performance partner for her daughter, Angi, a BC1 player with cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
Sylvie has been to two Paralympics. In Seoul 1988, she returned with a bronze medal in the 100m and in Barcelona 1992, she powered through an injury to finish 5th in the 100m. She was essential in bringing the Association québécoise de sports pour paralytiques cérébraux to life and was chair of the board for seven years. Since then, she has continued to be an advocate for those with disabilities and now coaches boccia to youth through the Centre d’Intégration à la vie active (CIVA).
Tara grew up with family members with cerebral palsy and is now the provincial coordinator for boccia for the Alberta Cerebral Palsy Sports Association. In university, she studied the barriers that people with disabilities face in small towns, and then started a non-profit organization in Medicine Hat for adaptive sports. Tara is also the head coach of the Canadian women’s national sledge hockey team as well as a boccia coach for Medicine Hat Adaptive Sport and Recreation Club