Zim plans multination 5-day blind football workshop

Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Acting Sports Editor
PLANS are underway for the country to play host to a multination five-day blind football workshop whose aim will be to educate the general public about the sport.

Keon Richardson, blind football development coordinator for Zimbabwe National Paralympic Committee who has been on a crusade to popularise the sport in the country through organising workshops that has resulted in coaching clinics in Harare, Bulawayo and Masvingo, said they hope to invite at least three countries to the country.

“After the three workshops in Harare, Bulawayo and Masvingo we are now aiming at holding a five-day blind football coaching clinic where we will invite our neighbouring countries like Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique,” said Richardson.

At the Bulawayo coaching clinic held last week, 25 coaches, two of them visually impaired, attended the workshop.

Richardson said they were keen at having Zimbabwe represented at the next IBSA Women’s Blind Football Training Camp and Games in Japan next year in February.

“So far we are confident that Chengetai Chipanaga from Murewa High School Resource Unit for the Visually Impaired will be going,” said Richardson.

“IBSA is in charge of a wide range of sports for athletes that are visually impaired or partially sighted.

It was founded in April 1981 when representatives from 30 countries met at the Unesco headquarters in Paris, France, to set up the organisation.

“We are full and founding members of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) where we represent the interests of visually impaired sportsmen and sportswomen,” reads an excerpt from the organisation’s official website.

Football for the blind and partially sighted, which started out as a playground game for pupils in special schools for the visually impaired, has now become one of the most popular sports for people with a visual impairment worldwide.

The first women’s blind football camp in the world took place in Vienna, Austria, in May 2017 where 75 people representing 16 countries participated.