Lucia Ribeiro is a 22 year-old medical student and youth rowing coach from Montevideo, Uruguay. Over the past few weeks however, you would have been more likely to find the former Uruguay U23 national team rower on the Charles river in a coaching launch or at CRI's Harry Parker boathouse learning about rigging, physiology, or community outreach.

Ribeiro is the first-ever participant in the new "Certificate in Community Building for Rowing" program, a unique partnership between CRI's Institute for Rowing Leadership (IRL), FISA and the Olympic Solidarity movement, in what all involved hope will be the start of a new global approach to rowing education.

During her three-week stay at CRI since early October, Ribeiro has been involved in the full gamut of rowing education that CRI offers, observing high school and college coaches on the water, participating in detailed biomechanical sessions, and exploring some of the underlying values that can tie rowing organizations to the communities they serve.

Ribeiro and CRI Paralympian Jenny Sichel

"All that I have learned I will take with me," said Ribeiro. "It is a thing that I am impressed with in CRI. There are lots of people of different ages, ethnicities, religions rowing here, and all of them are considered equal. It is amazing for me. In this way, adding people who enjoy rowing is how, day by day, this sport, our sport, will continue to grow."

Ribeiro detailed the wide range of instruction she'd received in her short time at CRI. "I have learned about exercise physiology, sports nutrition, psychology, the different personalities and the roles that can take in rowing, training plans, rigging, technique, biomechanics, and about common injuries and how to avoid them," said Ribeiro. "I have also learned about values, teamwork, cooperation, emotions, how to help people understand each other, especially young people, and finding ways in which teaching and learning can be nice and helping people love rowing."

"It is clear she is taking full advantage of this opportunity," said CRI coach Wayne Berger, whom Ribeiro accompanied during coaching sessions while in Boston. "She's bright, capable, and passionate. I was really impressed with her."

Tiffany Macon, CRI's Middle School coordinator, also considered Ribeiro's visit a success. "My hope is that I can help give her the tools to increase youth rowing participation in Uruguay. In five years, I hope Lucia is able to come back to Boston to tell exciting stories about youth rowing in Uruguay."

Beyond the nuts and bolts of coaching rowing, the goals of this new certificate program look to extend the impact of rowing, rowers and coaches outside the boathouse. "Providing a world-class education for coaches working at the grassroots level equips those typically beset with few resources the ability to share the best of our sport with all those at the beginning of their lifetime journey in rowing," said Matt Lehrer, CRI's Director of Coaching Education. "By becoming the nurturers of their local rowing communities, coaches graduating from the CCBR program will function as highly leveraged community influencers that embody a passionate commitment to the worldwide development of rowing."

The cooperation between CRI, FISA and the Olympic Solidarity movement in developing the program is not happenstance, and took shape over more than a year of planning.

"The first discussions were held in the beginning of 2015," said Daniela Gomes da Costa, a Development Coordinator at FISA, the international governing body of rowing. "FISA reviewed the concept around the IRL Course and found it very interesting. We found it to be quite useful to help develop the FISA women in coaching program, one of the FISA Women´s Development Projects whose main objective is to increase the number of female coaches and gender equity in Coaching. We discussed having a pilot project for 2016, with one female coach attending IRL if we were able to find financial support. This is one project for which we totally depended on external support."

With financial backing from Olympic Solidarity, the plans became a reality. "The IRL worked on a specific offer that perfectly matched our objective and following discussions with the International Olympic Committee, Olympic Solidarity agreed to support a pilot project," continued Gomes. "We had shortlisted a few coaches together with our Continental Development Coaches and it made a lot of sense to support Lucia, as the Uruguayan National Federation is currently developing a schools program and this training opportunity will help strengthen their activity."

Talking biomechanics with Dr. Tyler Page

CRI's Lehrer detailed the core visions of the partnership. "FISA and CRI have the shared belief that professionally trained community leaders driving grassroots development is the key to future growth in rowing," he said. "Given our background in coaching education with the Institute for Rowing Leadership yearlong fellowship program over the past six years, collaborating together to extend this opportunity in a different form to coaches looking to build the sport across the world made too much sense not to pursue as a joint effort. Using our organizational expertise developed through multiple current coaching education efforts, CRI proposed a residential three-week training program for community leaders targeted at building rowing in their home community."

As far as long term goals are concerned, all participants seem heartened by Ribeiro's experiences and hope to build and enhance the program going forward.

"We anticipate offering this program on an annual basis, as there is a great need both domestically and worldwide for coaches with expert knowledge focused on the development of rowing at the grassroots in new and existing rowing communities," Lehrer said.

As for Ribeiro, she admits that she's living a coaching dream at the moment. "I did not think something like this was possible," she said. "Undoubtedly, this comes true with the effort that Olympic Solidarity, FISA and CRI put into this. If we think about the future, is not a chance just for me to grow, but also to be considered by coaches from all around the world who want to improve their knowledge. I believe fabulous things can come true in the future."