Do you know, who runs your national or federal unicycling federation? Who is in the board of the IUF? Have you ever wondered which of your unicycling experiences was only possible because dedicated volunteers in the unicycling federations sacrifice their free time to maintain and develop our niche sport, organizing events or developing rule books instead of going on a ride?
To keep our sport alive and develop and spread it, to organize championships, from local to worldwide, to develop rules that make fair competitions possible, to gather and spread information, to run websites and regularly fill them with relevant information, all this is a lot of time-consuming work. And this is especially the case as the shoulders on which the burden is distributed become fewer and fewer.
Many unicycling federations / associations aren’t even able anymore to fill their board with the amount of staff needed to run them. All unicycling associations I know have vacant posts. At the state we are now in, it becomes almost impossible to fulfil even the minimum amount of work that is needed to be done to keep our sport at the current level of professionality.
And that’s where you come in:
The organizations of our sport desperately need your help!
If you have any time that you could to spend, if you have an interest in maintaining the current level of professionalism in our sport, or if you maybe have good connections throughout the unicycling community: Please get in touch with your local / federal / national / international unicycling association and ask, what you can do for them!
I just want to give you some examples of the current situation:
The Current Board of directors of the IUF consist of only 6 persons. Two are willing to quit, one is only temporary. No wonder that the last post on their website if two years old.
In the German unicycling federation, we used to have a board of 16 representatives for all federal states, 8 people for the disciplines, and some more. At the moment, we are only a team of nine people left. 13 of the 16 federal states don’t even have a chapter.
After @makym contacted me to ask for help in the IUF, I tried to find out, if this problem is the same for all national unicycling associations. The IUF website lists 17 countries with national organizations. I tried to reach all of them, but could only find contact information for five. One of the mails could not be delivered. In the end, I only got one single response.
Thanks for this message! That’s something we also see in France. In particular, there are way less conventions than a few years back. Covid-19 is a reason, but we also see that there are less and less people willing to engage themselves.
BTW, @Eric_aus_Chemnitz, you can contact the French Unicycling Federation at CommissionNationaleMonocycle@gmail.com. We try to be as reactive as possible. But you said it all: it is time-consuming to run such an organisation.
It may be a great idea to create a page (on unicycling.org?) or a wiki on this forum to list all the national associations. So anyone wanting to contact their national association would be able to do so.
Where is this list? Couldn’t find it. I did find a page with National Representatives, but it has 19 entries and so is probably not what you mean.
I am in the board of our Dutch National Organisation, but I’m pretty sure we have not been contacted by you, or I would have responded. I would also be in a good position to be National Representative for The Netherlands, I guess, although I don’t really know what is expected from a National Representative. Is there a procdure to apply for this role? The IUF website seems to be lacking in this respect.
This list is way out of datE. I asked IUF more than once to update the french contact, and it did not happen. No wonder you did not get responses : most contact are about 10 years old.
On the topic: yes, it is hard. Especially with events in France, as @Maxence said. We need strong leadership, and people willing to help, with great autonomy.
