Ellina Mhlanga
1 July 2011
A committee set up by the Sports Commission to assess progress made on the implementation of the Community Sport Development Programme nationwide has commended some of the districts for a job well done.
The Sports Commission set up a committee made up of the commission’s board member Eugenia Chidhakwa, development director Joseph Muchechetere, operations manager (Northern Region) Daniel Kuwengwa, Southern Region operations manager Isaiah Mpofu and acting CSDP manager Tirivashe Nheweyembwa to assess the progress on the implementation of the programme.
The committee, working in collaboration with Unicef Zimbabwe and Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports, visited Mzingwane, Emakandeni, Murowa in Zvishavane and Nemanwa in Masvingo on a fact finding mission to assess the benefits and challenges the communities were facing in implementing the sport developmental programme.
Nheweyembwa was impressed with the work that has been done in some of the districts.
“Indeed sport development clubs are in existence but there is need to have coaches and umpires trained for quality sport development.
“We were impressed with what we saw on the ground in some areas, for instance in Murowa they have created a very strong partnership with the Murowa mining company,” said Nheweyembwa.
He said a lot of positive developments have been made since the inception of the CSDP in 2009 during the seventh edition of the National Youth Games.
“A lot of success has been made. The key objective of this programme is to create community sport structures and link them to the national structures.
‘We have managed to train the district sport development committees.
“We have managed to train and identify from national level to district level sport education tutors,” said Nheweyembwa.
Nheweyembwa, however, said there were some issues that needed to be addressed within the districts for the programme to yield the intended results.
“Generally we noted that whilst the Sports and Recreation Commission had distributed balls, bibs and other equipment there is need for the community sports clubs to be self reliant because we won’t be able to provide for them always.
“In some of the areas we visited we realised that the community sports clubs need to work with other stakeholders in their programmes.
“There are many community based sport development agencies they can work with.
“They need to engage other stakeholders so that they can get the resources they are crying for within their districts.
“In some of the districts they are taking long to understand the concept of the programme. The other challenge is to increase the number of women and girls participation in sports,” said Nheweyembwa.
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