Category Archives: Oceania

04/04/2017

Oceania

Timor-Leste 'Mum's a Hero' Program

SOUTHPORT - With the United Nation's International Day of Sport for Development and Peace fast approaching, we take a look at FIBA's Basketball '+' program.

Active in five (5) nations throughout Oceania and Asia, this program uses basketball as a community development tool. Each nation has its own key social objectives but the overall goal is to improve peoples lives through basketball.

Since its inception in 2014, Basketball '+' has helped thousands of people across the Pacific and Asia realise their love for the game and the power it has to positively affect their lives.

Basketball '+' in Fiji launched the 'Hoops for Health' (H4H) and 'Mum's a Hero' programs focusing on the awareness and prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCD) plus increasing female participation. In the programs 21-months of activity, Basketball Fiji has touched the lives of 24,565 participants. From school children to local mothers, basketball has served as tool for the people of Fiji to improve their lifestyle, health and community.

"Before Hoops for Health I stayed home most of the time and was never interested in outdoors activities," said Fijian Mum's a Hero participant, Miri. "Having a proper diet was never important to me [after participating in Mums A Hero] I now involve myself with outdoors activities in order to keep fit and stay healthy for my family."

Mum's A Hero program in Lautoka, Fiji

Basketball Fiji H4H school visit in Nehru

The Kiribati Basketball Federation's (KBF) H4H program teaches school children and the local community about the risks of NCD's and how this can be prevented. Kiribati's coaches have made a difference to all 7,550 participants who have joined them on court and in the classroom to learn and share their passion for basketball.

The KBF also use 3x3 basketball as a way to keep people fit and active. Many people who have never played basketball are discovering a great love for the sport; the KBF has even helped people who lost their love for the game many years ago, find it once again.

One such person is H4H participant Muieraoi who can be found at almost every KBF H4H event.

"At first I only played hoop for fun," said Muieraoi. "Now through the Hoops for Health program, I am starting on having this mentality as I have to play for my health. I managed to influence my two elder brothers to play the game not only for fun but also if they value their lives or health. I found myself happy as I get to know lots of people or players from other clubs.I haven't missed any basketball functions I get involved more and forget other influences like alcohol as I set my target to be thebest basketball player in three years."

Kiribati's Hoops for Health program keeping the local community active

Women of Kiribati enjoying a H4H session

Basketball '+' is still very new in Papua New Guinea but the community has embraced the program wholeheartedly. PNG is a proud nation full of passionate people, many of whom are big basketball fans. This is shown in the 3,131 participants the program has seen in just its first 8-months.

The Basketball Federation of Papua New Guinea (BFPNG) is keeping up with the demand for basketball in country by introducing the H4H, Twilight Basketball, Daytime Community Hoops and most recently Pikinini Hoops programs. Each of which target different sections of the community but all focus on a healthy lifestyle and positively impacting youth social behaviour in PNG.

"It's about much more than just promoting Basketball," stated BFPNG Chief Executive Officer Joel Khalu. "It is about utilising the sport to make a positive impact on the community. We're creating an avenue for kids to get off the streets and into a positive environment, where they can play sport for free and get educated on various ways to live happier and healthier lives."

PNG's Pikinini Hoops program

H4H visit toSt Joseph's International Catholic College in PNG

Timor-Leste's 'Mum's a Hero' program encourages more females to participate in basketball activities and feel empowered. The program is aimed at mothers in communities who can have an impact on the habits of their families.

Timor-Leste's 'Mum's a Hero' program bringing basketball to the community

Timor-Leste Coaches encourage everyone to get involved in the game

Vanuatu's H4H program seeks to use basketball as a tool to combat NCDs. In this case, Vanuatu's H4H coaches help educate Vanuatu's youth of the food the body does and doesnt need plus the benefits of a healthy diet and regular exercise.

"I came to know about Hoops for Health when I started working with Vanuatu Basketball Federation (VBF)," recalled VBF H4H Coordinator, Annie Obed. "I've heard about non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and the risks, but I never thought of using basketball las a tool to advocate NCDs is all about lifestyle choices. If I made the right choice now I will benefit from it later."

Vanuatu's H4H program community visit

VBF Vila East Primary School visit

FIBA's H4H and 'Mum's a Hero' programs are made possible by Australian Government funding through the Pacific Sports Partnership Program.

FIBA

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Basketball '+' creating waves of change across Oceania - FIBA

Heroes of the Storm has enjoyed much success in America, Europe and Korea, dominating the playing field. Australia is now starting to emerge as a region to watch.

Until recently, there was not much available for those who wanted to go pro in Australia. Community-run events were scarce and dependent on those often juggling other commitments.

Australian New Zealand Heroes was a great initiative to kick start a community presence in the region.

Founded by dynamic duo Micheal Disconcur Roberts and Nicole Neri Roberts, they focused on bringing Heroes of the Storm to life down under.

Another organisation committed to the cause and stepping in was Gamestah, an Australian esports event organiser and broadcaster. Between ANZ Heroes and Gamestah, the community suddenly had competitions brought to life and a way for teams to stay connected. Also, as of last year, Blizzard ANZ shifted its attention towards seeing how they could best support this emerging esports community.

The Ember Series format for semi-pros, launched by Gamestah in June 2016, featured weekly matches with cash prizes up for grabs. ANZ Heroes in partnership with Blizzard ANZ also featured a cash prize competition in the form of King of the Hill a weekly best-of-one-match series.

ANZ Royal Rumble was a solo sign-up tournament organised by ANZ Heroes in conjunction with Morton, a long-term community member and player who previously used to organise these free agent tournaments for fun in the early days of ANZ Heroes of the Storm. This tournament had an emphasis on fun over prizes, as your team would be generated randomly, with the aim to have all rankings of players distributed equally.

One huge announcement by Blizzard ANZ last year, on the back of all these community initiatives, was to give our region a proper competitive environment. Blizzard finals were announced, with the road to finals in the form of qualifiers being organised and streamed online by ANZ Heroes and Gamestah.

The finals would be played out at the Electronic Sports League Sydney studio and all the action would be broadcasted live online.

These competitions saw some great teams forged and others crumble. Negative Synergy was one such team that looked to be destined for greatness after winning finals, and then disbanded after their first international showing. Four ex-members of the team created the fittingly named team Reborn and, more recently, Nomia, who have proven they are the team to beat now in ANZ with an almost flawless match history.

On an International level were doing well too. The Grand Master leaderboards for the Americas region features our talent in JimJam, Arcaner, robahdobah, AgainstTime, and AeternaNyx at the time of writing.

Some local Grand Master players have even taken on the challenge of playing on other regions servers to achieve the same rank. This is done to challenge themselves further and develop as better players, with each region favouring a slightly different take on the meta and playstyles. It shows that we have some amazing talent right here in our ranks that are eager to become the next Nomia.

Nomia are currently the team to beat. They are the go-to favourites in ANZ, with an impressive track record, only dropping one game in qualifiers last season. Its good to see in the Gamestah Season 2 qualifiers they have also dropped one game to date to Mortons List.

This is a good thing because teams taking games off them proves they are being challenged. This means that all teams involved can push themselves to go even further and improve their quality of gameplay.

Since I started getting involved in Heroes of the Storm locally, the experience and quality of teams has rapidly improved. Blizzard ANZ supplying community prizes in the forms of skins is a nice gesture to ensure participation does not go unrewarded, as it is a daunting task to begin from the bottom. They have also shown that they are ready to shake things up with their recent announcement of Heroes of the Storm 2.0, acknowledging how far the game has come since its launch.

Heroes of the Storm in Australia and New Zealand has had a turbulent ride. This season has shown that Blizzard ANZ and ANZ esports organisations are willing to put in the time for any players that are serious about representing our region.

Nomia, Mortons List, Lleyton Hewitt FC and TrumpSports are all in the leaderboards for the Gamestah Season 2 qualifiers, time will tell how they fare.

Tune in on Tuesdays 8pm to catch the running season 2 qualifier series.

View original post here:

Where Heroes of the Storm stands in Oceania - The Roar

Having explored how demographic and economic changes, climate and environmental shiftsare affecting food security in Asia, the worlds most populous continent, New Food considers to what extent Oceania might present a potential solution to the impending global crisis.

With many Asian nations facing difficulties trying to meet the growing and changing food demand (explored further here), a solution might exist in the form of Oceania, or for the purpose of this article, Australia and New Zealand.

New Zealand, for example, has a booming agriculture sector. Sheep farming is the major rural activity, with beef cattle farming in the hills and high country, and a strong dairy industry on the rise in the Canterbury, Otago and Southland areas. Large multinational companies such as Fonterra are making significant expansion moves into the Chinese market for example and are proud of their New Zealand roots and identity. Furthermore, New Zealand is also the worlds eighth largest milk producer, with approximately 2.2% of world production coming from its beautiful countryside.

Agriculture is of phenomenal importance to Australia and the nation has a rich history of exporting agricultural goods. The sectorearns roughly $155 billion-a-year for a 12% share of national GDP. Australian farmers and grazers own 135,997 farms, covering 61% of Australias landmass. With Asias growing middle class and subsequent increasing demand for livestock and meat-based goods, Australias economic and agricultural set-up feels like a good fit to supply the changing nature of demand, certainly in China and South East Asia.The Asian region will be home to approximately 3.2 billion affluent, middle-class people by the year 2030, mostly in near neighbours China, India and Indonesia, though dependent on precisely how the terms middle-class and affluent are defined.

East Asias dominance as the target of Australias exports will continue to grow over the next fifteen years it is thought. China is thought to be the primary export market, thoughAustralias potential to serve as a food bowl for Asia though is dependent on how high Asias economic growth rates and how this growth will influence structural changes and import demand in Asia.

Oceania on the face of things however, looks suitable to serve as potential alleviating force of the Asian food security challenge the world now faces.

That said, as some critics suggest, the food bowl rhetoric is little more than just a political catchphrase. In reality, some argue, China have been investing more in Africa.

Africas cheaper land, lower wages and relative regulatory freedom with regard to environmental regulations has emergedas the low-cost and large-scale target of Chinese agricultural investment.

There are measures Oceania can either take or outcomes that would aid the region in any aim at becoming a food bowl:

Food security in Asia will play a significant role in global matters over the next few decades and for a key insight, check out the rest of the Feeding Asia series below. New Food hopes you have enjoyed the series andto become a member of the publication for free, click here.

Link:

Feeding Asia: Is Oceania a viable food bowl? - New Food (blog)

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Temengil elected 1st female VP in Oceania Olympic... - Hamilton Spectator

Economic Times

Nunzio Mirtillo is appointed Head of Market Area South East Asia, Oceania and India Technuter (blog) In line with Ericsson's recent announcement about the changes to its business strategy, structure and Executive Team, Nunzio Mirtillo is appointed as Head of Market Area South East Asia, Oceania and India. In this role, Nunzio has responsibility for ... Ericsson appoints new market headIndia.com all 5 news articles »

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Nunzio Mirtillo is appointed Head of Market Area South East Asia, Oceania and India - Technuter (blog)

REXINE HAWES

Last updated09:00, April 3 2017

Rexine Hawes

Michelle Montague won gold at the Oceania Wrestling Championships in Tahiti.

Matamata woman Michelle Montague is one step closer to her goal of making the New Zealandwrestling team to compete at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

The Hamilton Hawks wrestling team member has just returned from competing in the Oceania Wrestling Championshipsin Tahiti - bringing homea gold medal.

Winning at the Oceania competitionmeans she qualifies for theCommonwealth wrestlingchampionships coming up soon.

Montague travelled to Tahiti with the New Zealand wrestling team last month, winning all three of her matches, in the 75kg weight range.

Her family, who own the Matamata business Viking Kayaks, went to cheer her on.

"They were pretty excited to be there," she said.

"It was a big learning experience for them too."

Montague was one of 27 wrestlers to compete for New Zealand and they joined nine other countries at the champs.

It was an eventshe had trained hard for.

Dealing with the heat upon arrivalwas something new and continued to be a challenge throughout the competition.

"It was like 38-40 degrees every day."

She said the wrestling arena also lackedair conditioning, which made the heat even more intense.

However it didn't deter the young woman, who finished all three rounds undefeated.

Montague's first match was against an Australian woman, whom she was hoping to wrestle against.

In wrestling, a winner is determined by a pin, or points. Matches can last from 30 seconds, up to six minutes.

She won the first match 10-0.

"She was my biggest challenge, I was looking forward to wrestling her the most.

"I thought it was good to face her first, so we couldn't watch each other."

Her second match was against another New Zealander and the third against another Australian.

Montague saidthe pressure ofthe heat began to mount by her third fight.

"It followed pretty quickly after the second match, so Iwasn't engaged."

She went to the prize giving feeling confident the gold was her's.

With her family watching, she stood on the podium and accepted her medal.

"It was a good sense of achievementand my family was pretty proud," she said.

Montague shared the glory of gold with other members of the New Zealand team, many of whom dominated their weight classes.

In total, New Zealand won 16 gold, 10 silver and two bronze in freestyle and seven gold and two silver in Greco-Roman (for men only).

Montague'sfocus is now preparing for the Commonwealth championships on the Gold Coast later this year.

The top six competitors will qualify for the Commonwealth Games in April 2018, also on the Gold Coast.

She may also have a European wrestling tournament mid-year.

Montague's long-term goal is to compete in mixed martial arts (MMA), of which wrestling is one component.

She has already competed and won a few MMA tournaments in Auckland.

She trains and competes in jiu-jitsu through Core MMA Gym in Hamilton and works out five-days-a-week at Fitzone Matamata to keep in top shape for tournaments and the approaching rugby season.

-Stuff

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Oceania gold means Waikato wrestler is closer to Commonwealth ... - Waikato Times

Oceania's rugby sevens teams have been handed an increase in funding as they seek to replicate the achievement of the Fijian men's side at Rio 2016.

Fiji's 13-man squad became the country's first Olympic gold medallists when they triumphed at last year's Olympics.

The sevens team defeated Britain 43-7 in the final as the sport made its debut at the Games.

Before Rio, the Fijian team were also crowned as winners of the World Rugby Sevens Series after a number of fine performances.

Their achievements saw the team inducted into the Fiji Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (FASANOC) Hall of Fame earlier this week, while they have also acted as an inspiration to the region's other sides.

Oceania Rugby's services manager Bruce Cook has now confirmed several teams are set to receive a funding boost as they look towards qualification for Tokyo 2020.

"This is the start of a new four-year cycle for Fijian rugby and other teams in the Pacific," Cook told the Fiji Sun.

"Most teams that missed out on the Olympics have been given additional funding and chances to get through the repechage, both men and women, [including] teams from Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga.

"There are a number of exciting programmes aligned with the increase of funding, which rugby unions can apply for and the funding could help them.

"It is up to the National Federations to get their houses in order."

Australia, Fiji and New Zealand represented Oceania in the men's and women's competitions at last years Games.

Samoa narrowly missed out on securing the last place in the men's event, losing in the final qualifier to Spain.

See more here:

Rugby in Oceania to receive pre-Tokyo 2020 funding boost - Insidethegames.biz

Oceania Healthcare is aiming to raise $200 million in a share float on the New Zealand and Australian stockmarkets.

Photo: 123RF

New Zealand's third largest rest home operator - which is owned by funds managed by Australia's Macquarie Group - is offering up to 263.2 million new shares for between 76c and $1.04 each.

That would value Oceania Healthcare between $472m and $571m.

The proceeds from the float would be used to pay down debt and give the company flexibility to buy more development sites.

Oceania chief executive Earl Gasparich said the company's focus on government-funded aged care gave it a stable cashflow in a sector with growing demand.

While 73 percent of its portfolio was weighted towards care beds, that was expected to fall to two-thirds, once Oceania's current development sites were built-out, over the next eight years.

The company's underlying profit rose 59 percent last year to $47m, compared with $29.5m in 2015.

That profit was expected to fall by 6 percent this year to $44.3m, as resale volumes were expected to fall, while 100 care-beds were taken out of service, ahead of some redevelopment.

However, the company expected underlying profit growth to bounce back next year, with a forecast 40 percent increase, as it completed a couple of development projects.

The share offer opens on 13 April, with listings on the NZX and ASX scheduled for 5 May.

Originally posted here:

Oceania Healthcare out to raise $200m in a share float - Radio New Zealand

Red Bull

Can Oceania Compete Against Rocket League's Best? Red Bull The third RLCS season introduces Oceania to the fray, which for the league's purposes includes Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines and several other islands. Two finalists from a regional tournament will face off against the four best ...

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Can Oceania Compete Against Rocket League's Best? - Red Bull

Oceania's rugby sevens teams have been handed an increase in funding as they seek to replicate the achievement of the Fijian men's side at Rio 2016.

Fiji's 13-man squad became the country's first Olympic gold medallists when they triumphed at last year's Olympics.

The sevens team defeated Britain 43-7 in the final as the sport made its debut at the Games.

Before Rio, the Fijian team were also crowned as winners of the World Rugby Sevens Series after a number of fine performances.

Their achievements saw the team inducted into the Fiji Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (FASANOC) Hall of Fame earlier this week, while they have also acted as an inspiration to the region's other sides.

Oceania Rugby's services manager Bruce Cook has now confirmed several teams are set to receive a funding boost as they look towards qualification for Tokyo 2020.

"This is the start of a new four-year cycle for Fijian rugby and other teams in the Pacific," Cook told the Fiji Sun.

"Most teams that missed out on the Olympics have been given additional funding and chances to get through the repechage, both men and women, [including] teams from Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga.

"There are a number of exciting programmes aligned with the increase of funding, which rugby unions can apply for and the funding could help them.

"It is up to the National Federations to get their houses in order."

Australia, Fiji and New Zealand represented Oceania in the men's and women's competitions at last years Games.

Samoa narrowly missed out on securing the last place in the men's event, losing in the final qualifier to Spain.

Go here to see the original:

Oceania's rugby sevens teams poised for funding boost - Insidethegames.biz