adminThe programme which seeks to promote sports development at grassroots level started in 2008 and has so far trained community sports development officers and distributed equipment worth thousands of dollars.
This year the programme received an annual operational grant of $415 000 from Unicef Zimbabwe and the Norwegian Sport Confederation.
Norwegians supplied 1 960 balls for volleyball, netball and football that were distributed to community sport clubs in the 20 districts involved in the programme.
As part of the programme a team of Norwegian instructors were in the country and conducted grassroots coaching courses in Harare and Bulawayo.
They held courses in volleyball, football and athletics with 62 participants in Harare and 58 in Bulawayo.
In the report CSDP manager Martin Dururu said they had also held a number of workshops in 20 districts for the local sports development committees.
“Twenty workshops were held in districts to re-orient the district sports development committees and they were also inducted into the YES (Youth Education through Sports) concept.
“The re-orientation sessions helped in enhancing the district sports organisers’ appreciation of the YES programme and was attended by 256 ladies and 454 men,” he wrote in the report.
Dururu said there was a lot of community club activity during the year which was co-ordinated by ward sport volunteer facilitators.
“They are responsible for co-ordinating community club activity in the 400 wards and to enhance their capacity to execute that task, basic sport administration training sessions were held in 20 district with 160 ladies and 221 men participants,’ he said.
The programme also covered the YES Games with the winners of the national final representing the country at the East Africa Cup held in Moshi, Tanzania in June.
Bindura Football Academy’s Under-13 boys and Strides Academy Under-16 girls’ volleyball team represented the country in Tanzania.
The teams participated in sport competitions, life skills development sessions and youth cultural exchange with Bindura Football Academy being given the Fairplay Award for having fielded a team that was the appropriate age.
Through the programme the SRC also held club training programmes and distributed 1600 sport specific manuals which were equally divided in football, athletics, netball and volleyball.
Under the CSDP there are also programmes such as the Zimbabwe National Youth Games which are held around August every year and the National Paralympic and the Yes Games.
Matabeleland South held the ninth edition of the Youth Games in Gwanda and Umzingwane Districts with Harare winning the overall competition with 20 gold medals. Midlands and Mashonaland West were second and third respectively.
Some of the organisations that the SRC worked with in the programme include Plan Zimbabwe, Red Cross, Zimbabwe AIDS Network.
Online Reporter