International Olympic Academy
| Abbreviation | IOA |
|---|---|
| Formation | June 14, 1961 |
| Legal status | legal entity of private law, supervised by the Greek Ministry of Culture under the patronage of the IOC |
| Headquarters | 52, Dimitrios Vikelas Avenue 152 33 Halandri - Athens |
| Website | www |
The International Olympic Academy is the main international educational and cultural institution that, within the context of action of the International Olympic Committee, aims to promote the Olympic Ideals and to develop the Olympic Education. These aims are achieved through the organization of certain activities like the Annual International Sessions of Young Participants, of the National Olympic Academies and of the International Postgraduate Seminar. Additionally, along with the rest of the Sessions that are organized every two years, like the Olympic Medalists, the Educators and the Journalists.
Simultaneously, the IOA in cooperation with the University of Peloponnese and thanks to the kind sponsorship of the John Latsis Foundation organizes an International Postgraduate Program for Olympic Studies (Master’s Degree Program) that lasts two years.
The IOA premises are in the center of the Ancient Olympia archaeological site, where the Olympic Games and the idea and the philosophy of life of Olympism were born and developed, as the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, renovator of the modern Olympic Games, underlines.
The IOA premises in Ancient Olympia consists of a contemporary and fully equipped Auditorium of 500 seats, a room for general presentations of 250 seats, 5 teaching rooms, a library with more than 16.000 book titles, a restaurant and accommodation rooms for one and two persons as well as dormitories for eight persons with air conditions, toilets and bathrooms. The accommodation rooms are plain and simple and they combine in the best possible way the direct contact of the visitor with the nature, the learning and research.
The founder of the contemporary Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, had very timely diagnosed the need for an Olympic institution of a spiritual nature. He believed that the Olympic Movement should not deviate from its educational objectives and had written: “I have not been able to carry out to the end what I wanted to achieve. I believe that a center of Olympic Studies would contribute, more than anything else, to the preservation and continuation of my work and would protect it from the deviations, which I am afraid will happen”.
This institution would be responsible for the research, the philosophy and the principles of Olympism, the study of the means and methods for the realization and the application of its ideas in our continuously progressing contemporary world. Additionally, it would undertake the education of the appropriate staff, a staff which would be in a position to drive Olympism towards the correct direction, in accordance with the social developments of the times, without, however, mutating the basic lines of the Olympic ideals and the aims of Pierre de Coubertin.
It is widely known that Coubertin wished to convey the Olympic idea to the contemporary world, as a means of education. He, therefore, restored the Olympic Games, for he recognized the fact that, through the Games, he would be able to attract the interest of both public opinion and governments, so that the Olympic principles and ideals would eventually be applied to the general education of the young. According to Coubertin, Olympism has a philosophical and educational dimension. He conceived the idea of reviving the ancient Olympic Games, within a framework of global revival, with sport acting as an instrument for the physical, ethical and cultural education of generations of youth. As a result of the rapid and prodigious development and the wide acceptance of the Olympic Games, coupled with the increasing involvement and participation of people in physical education and sports, the need for an immediate resolution of the issue of appropriate staff education became more urgent. In spite of the fact that the Olympic Games in effect conquered the world, Coubertin realized that they were led away from their original intent, as he had visualized it. When Karl Diem, a leading figure in the German sports, came to Greece, in 1938, for the burial of Coubertin’s heart in the commemorative stele that had been erected in 1927 in Ancient Olympia, it appears that he shared his idea of establishing this important center of philosophical research in Ancient Olympia, based on the model of the Institute of Olympic Studies that already operated in Berlin, with Ioannis Ketseas, Member of IOC for Greece, visionary of that time.
...
Wikipedia