On 2 and 3 February 2016, representatives of the SIGGS Steering Committee (SteerCo) met with delegates from the NOC of Portugal and the NOC of Lithuania with the aim to prepare the organisation of the SIGGS National Strategic Workshops in these two countries.

With the organisation of National Strategic Workshops, the project intends to present the results of the first consultation rounds of the self-evaluation tool (while respecting the confidentiality of the results), to inform about good governance and the SIGGS Project as well as to provide practical guidance (through concrete Action Plans) and to discuss possible ways to continue after the Workshop.

These two meetings gathered the SIGGS Project Management team (Matthias Van Baelen, Folker Hellmund and Valentin Capelli), WP Package leaders Thierry Zintz (UCL), Aurélien Favre (EOSE) and Florian Kaiser (Leadership Academy of DOSB) and representatives of the NOC (Joao Paulo Almeida, Rita Nunes and José Serrador of the NOC of Portugal on 2 February and Vaida Masalskyte of the NOC of Lithuania, accompanied by Miglius Astrauskas of the Lithuanian Handball Federation, on 3 February).

On 2 February, following a presentation made by Thierry Zintz on the results of the first test phase for Portugal, it was decided by the NOC of Portugal to use the upcoming weeks to analyse these results and to consider the applicable strategy to ensure the motivation and the involvement of a leading group of motivated national federations during the National Strategic Workshop. The date of the Workshop will be decided by the end of February.

Similarly, on 3 February, the participants discussed the results for Lithuania. The objective of their Workshop would be to focus on a limited number of interested organisations and to use them as multipliers towards the other federations. The National Strategic Workshop in Lithuania is scheduled to be held on 13 April 2016.

These preparatory meetings with Lithuania and Portugal were the second and third that have been organised, with Belgium having organised the meeting early January. Belgium has decided to schedule the Workshop provisionally on 7 June. Consequently, preparatory meetings will be scheduled in the upcoming weeks with the other NOCs, namely Luxembourg, Slovenia, Germany and Turkey, to schedule their Strategic Workshops in the forthcoming months.