The International Community Coach Education Standard (ICES) project aims to improve the sport and physical activity experience for children and young people through the development of a multi-national advocacy and quality assurance platform that will facilitate the training Participants at ICES conference.

and development of community level sport, physical activity and sport-for-development coaches. The ICES project is led by UK Sport and supported by International Inspiration, the international sport and physical education legacy programme of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Through this quality assurance framework ICES provides a platform for the promotion of quality training and development and avenue for sharing good practice and for joined up work focused on community and grassroots coaching. 

ICES is aimed at organisations and agencies involved in the development of coaches within sport, sport-for-development and community physical activity programmes, and encompasses a quality assurance framework for community coach and activity leaders’ training and development. Impact is aimed at an organisational level through recognising, supporting and advocating quality, ethical and holistic training for community sport coaches and activity leaders.
This includes the on-going identification of the capabilities community sport coaches and activity leaders require and fit for purpose benchmarking and mapping of organisations’ training and development programmes against these capabilities.

From October 27th to the 30th UK Sport visited Trinidad where an ICES workshop was held at Cascadia Hotel and Conference centre with delegates from around the region. Attendees included representatives from the Ministry of Sport – St Lucia, Ministry of Education – St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ministry of Education – Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago Womens’ Cricket Committee, La Horquetta South Primary school, the (Trinidad & Tobago) National Association of Basketball, the Olympic Committee, Paralympic and TTASPE.

At the workshop participants were asked to examine the role of coaches and the competencies needed to be an effective coach - the duties and responsibilities of coaches, qualities of a good coach, and ways to standardize ‘best’ coaching practices. They were also asked to critique and evaluate the material gathered at ICES conferences around the world and to make their contribution to what many see as the next step in creating the ultimate resource and knowledge sharing platform for Sport for Development.