adminthe young athletes taking part in sports, community projects and peer education.
In the sporting competition the teams will battle it out in netball, volleyball and football for both boys and girls. This year’s festival is running under the theme, ‘Reversing the HIV and AIDS tide, preserving the environment through sport’ and will end on Sunday. The teams were drawn from the Northern and Southern regions.
Harare, Mashonaland West, Manicaland, Mashonaland East, and Mashonaland Central provinces make up the Northern Region while their Southern counterparts are drawn from Bulawayo, Midlands, Masvingo, Matabeleland North and South.
The games started in January at a zonal level up to the provincial level and the winners will now battle it out in the national finals.
Sport and Recreation Commission communications officer, Tirivashe Nheweyembwa said they had now put everything in place and all teams are expected to be in Bulawayo today with competition starting tomorrow.
“I can confirm, we now have 25 teams that are going to take part in the national YES festival. Besides sporting competitions the teams will take part in peer education as in drama and poetry. They are also going to plant trees. This is a government policy and we are now in the tree planting season,” said Nheweyembwa.
Nheweyembwa said they would assess all the three components — sport, community projects and peer education and the team with the highest marks in all areas will be crowned the winners.
“The games in all three sporting disciplines will be played on a round robin format and the team with the highest marks in all the three components will be the winners.
“We will assess the work they would have done from January up to now and every team should bring their file with results from the zonal level, district and provincial level. The same will happen for the community projects and peer education. The reason is we are trying to make sure that this is not about the national festival only but we want a build up to this event. We want to mould a well rounded citizen,” said Nheweyembwa.
The SRC corporate communications officer said they were looking forward to a competitive event.
“This year it’s looking good, we have good teams coming up. The competition is going to be tough.
It’s not very much about competition but also learning. On the educational side we are running a Youth Camp such that each and every team will second an athlete who will not be taking part in the competition but will go into camp where they are taught about leadership and planning.”
Online Reporter