Interviewing Bridge2Success
by Alex J. Coyne © Great Bridge Links
Bridge2Success is a new bridge initiative that aims to get bridge players more involved in the game. We caught up with creator Ela Tomczuk to find out more about what Bridge2Success is all about and how it can help people fall in love with bridge.
“It started many, many years ago when I met my friend Asia Chmielewska at the University of Warsaw.” says Ela. “We were playing volleyball in the University Team, and we were playing bridge. Today, we don’t play volleyball anymore – but we still play bridge, which is our true passion.”
Ela says they don’t consider themselves professional bridge players as much as typical social players who meet regularly, have a nice dinner and get together to play bridge.
“During one of these evenings, we started talking about how there are fewer and fewer bridge players and decided we have to do something about it. That’s how we invented our initiative.”
Once they started talking to people, they garnered a lot of interest from bridge federations like the Polish Bridge Federation, young bridge layers from student organizations like BEST and AZS – and even from people who had never played bridge before in their lives.
Ela says their mission is to attract new players to bridge, especially those between 25 to 55: “We want them to say that thanks to bridge, they can develop competencies in the future, which are the most crucial elements in achieving success in both their private and professional lives.”
“They can also establish great contacts for the future.” The impact of bridge stretches even further, says Ela, and can help employers attract the best candidates.
“We believe that if more people play social bridge, some of them will be interested in more professional bridge playing.” The Bridge2Sucess initiative also includes free bridge training with some of the best Polish bridge players.
Some of the options they have in mind are Bridge2Success (for employees), Bridge2Success Grow (competencies via bridge), Bridge2Success Challenge (for bridge between companies) and Bridge2Success MeetUps (to encourage bridge candidates).
How will this be done?
Bridge2Success will employ a two-part method: a Hub and a Festival
The Hub will be a Bridge learning program where young bridge players teach their peers, the best Polish bridge players will volunteer to teach, the older will teach the younger, the younger will teach the older, and employers will teach their employees and playing business mentors will teach non-playing mentees.
They also envision the Bridge2Success FEST, the first global, social bridge festival for both amateur and professional bridge players. “The uniqueness of this festival is that it will be played the world over: The exact same game, with a live stream and score comparison.”
Warsaw, Poland, will host the first FEST of BRIDGE on May 11th 2019, with the participation of thousands of players, including students, managers, artists and performers, sports and political personalities, famous persons representatives of various professions.
Ela says that with this, they want to show that the game of bridge has no borders. Disabled players will be allowed to compete in the festival via remote link-up.
The overall point? Networking.
“We want to show that bridge is fun. We don’t offer master points and prizes,” says Ela. “It’s about knowing people of other nationalities, ages, professions, networking; it’s even about having a nice concert afterwards.”
Bridge2Success emphasises the key points of bridge beyond your card game. If you’re looking to increase your network of people through bridge, Bridge2Success is right up your alley.
Read more about Bridge2Success at their official website (not in English).
Click on https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=zkL9SBDFFIk
to watch the video about Bridge2Success
Click Here to download the Presentation of the Project
For more information,please contact:
Ela Tomczuk – ela.tomczuk@bridge2success.com.pl
Marek Malysa – marekmalysa4@gmail.com