6 EUSA
first 10 years
Welcome by the FISU President
I
t is a real pleasure for me to have the opportunity to share with
each of my colleagues who make up the membership of the European
University Sport Association (EUSA) my thoughts and dreams about the
value of a Continental Organization.FISU, the International University Sports Federation, is an organization
representing 153 countries from around the world, of which 46
are European countries. You are all aware and versed in our FISU
Universiades and our World Championships program. Rather than
reporting to you on these programs, let me switch gears and discuss our
FISU Continental program of which you and your colleagues in EUSA
have played a major role.
Some years ago we in FISU became very concerned and aware that we
needed to find a better way, a more direct way to reach out to each of
our member countries around the world. We had been very successful in
conducting both our Winter and Summer Universiades as well as in our
growing World University Championship program. With all of this success,
some instantaneously, we still had not been able to carry this success to
the far corners of our global membership.While we were searching for new ways to have our FISU programs
reach our global membership, a new organization composed of those
European countries who had a very solid and strong university student
sport program appeared. Little did we realize the impact and value of
EUSA at the time, but their founding set the stage for our current, FISU
Continental Organizations. Some eight years ago, FISU took the first steps
in establishing what we now refer to as our Continental Organizations. A
special FISU Commission was appointed, made up primarily of our Senior
FISU Executive Committee members to begin to study how a Continental
Organization could and would aid FISU and its global membership. The
Commission labelled its project “Challenge 21”.It has long been my belief that the Challenge 21 Commission was
extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to study and analyze the
European program and the progress that was being made by them in the
organization called EUSA.
What we learned from the Challenge 21 Commission and from monitoring
the prospering EUSA program during these four years allowed us the
opportunity of witnessing the birth of our Continental Organization
program.