Our grant helped the Metropolitan Sports & Social Club for the Visually Impaired to send three sports coaches to Japan to learn how to train totally blind players. ‘Sound Ball’ tennis started in Japan over 30 years ago and uses a special tennis ball that makes a noise to enable blind players to hear it. The visit inspired them to form a new tennis club for the visually impaired in the UK and it is hoped that the game of ‘Sound Ball’ tennis will spread internationally with the aim of making it a Paralympics sport.

Sports exchange, particularly when it involves young people, is an activity much encouraged by the Foundation.
Some recent grants awarded were to:-

• enable junior members of the Stonehaven Judo Club to join the All Japan Youth Budo (Judo) Training Festival in Tokyo and to attend a Junior Summer School


• assist the Dragon School, Oxford fund a soccer and netball tour to Keio Elementary School in Tokyo



• help the establishment of a traditional Japanese Ju-Jitsu club in Newtownabbey, Northeren Ireland



• allow Japan Desk Scotland to send former professional footballer and Celtic youth coach Joe McBride to travel to Chiba Prefecture in Japan and teach basic football skills to local primary and secondary school children, with a view to developing football-related youth exchange between Scotland and Japan. The coaching was arranged by Kashiwa FC and Showa Gakuin School.
  
  
• promote research by Loughborough University, School of Sport and Exercise Sciences into the validation of the coach-athlete relationship


• assist participation by the Japan Deaf Golf Association in the 8th Deaf Golf Championship in Scotland