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Getting the ball rolling

Nelson Mandela is quoted to have said: ‘Sport has the power to change the world, the power to inspire, the power to unite, people in a way that little else can. It speaks to people in a language they understand.’ The Sport in Action project is all about unleashing that power to bring life-changing impact to individuals and communities. Read the latest project news ...

The aim of the project is to equip and resource people of like vision to build coaching, participation and sports leadership development programmes for their communities. (find out more)

During May members of the Proton Project Development Team joined with Sports in Action pioneer Steve Wright of Durham University for a successful series of meetings with potential key partners across Romania to discuss the opportunities to bring community transformation through sport.

Steve and his wife Jude, who are also members of Xcel Church at Newton Aycliffe, have recently completed a four day sponsorsed expedition up the 14,000ft Machu Picchu mountain in Peru in June with all proceeds going to launch the first pilot projects. [sponsor/donate]

Steve & Jude Wright

First Step - to establish a Central Hub in partnership with Teen Challenge, Bucharest

Teen Challenge was started in 1958 by David Wilkinson. Since opening their first drug rehabilitation centre in New York in 1960, Teen Challenge has grown to over 120 centres in the U.S. and to over 100 centres in 76 countries around the world. Their objective over every centre is to offer teens and young adults a practical and thorough solution to drug and alcohol dependence, and other kinds of substance abuse. The Proton Foundation shares a warm relational connection with the Romanian Centre based at Bucharest and meeting with Executive Director Catalin Baciu and his wife Oltita was the team's first port of call.

Catalin & Oltita

Catalin showed us around the buzzing and vibrant Centre - a residential facility able to house and educate the enrolled ‘students’. We were shown the third floor which is still being built to provide a large meeting/lounge area and extra bedrooms.

The centre has extensive grounds which include greenhouses made by the students for growing their own vegetables and of course, our main focus of interest, an area of concrete that will be an Astro Turf pitch.

Teen Challenge Centre

The pitch under development

Thinking big

An inspired daylong session of dreaming, brainstorming and strategy development took place where, in addition to the existing vision to use sport as part of the rehabilitation program, the potential to use their facility to impact the community was fleshed out. There is something incredibly admirable about the attitude of Teen Challenge, filled with a confidence that they will make this happen, they have invested all available resources to take the Astro Trurf project this far and are now half way there to finding the funding to complete the final phase of the project.

Influencing Romania

The success of Sport in Action hangs on training, resourcing and releasing coaches in order to multiply capacity for sports provision. Steve Wright will be heading up this development, along with providing coaching education resources during 2010/11. It is hoped that an apprentice programme can be created to see some of the more 'sporty' residents at Teen Challenge offically trained and equipped as qualified coaches, giving the young men skills and an opportunity to pursue sports as a career.

Alongside continual mentoring, Steve plans to visit the Teen Challenge centre again to deliver a week of coaching which will be used as an opportunity to develop many more coaches from outside the Bucharest area. The Teen Challenge centre is the most advanced and best equipped of our project partners in Romania and the team there are keen to maximise the potential of their base as a central hub for supporting and training other project partners.

Steve Wright

We are excited about the opportunity to establish an apprenticeship programme that will provide coaching qualifications and employment for one or more of the Teen Challenge residents after graduation.

Constanta ... big Plans for Romania's second largest City

The beautiful coastal city of Constanta is the nation’s second city and one of Romania’s main tourist attractions. One of the stark differences between Romania’s cities and those of the UK was the almost complete lack of public green space. This lack of facilities makes something that would seem so simple become a real problem. With the struggles of a developing economy little finance is available for recreation and with the sporting facilities that are available being too expensive for most, we worked to find creative solutions with our NGO partners: Lighthouse lead by Daniel Bote, ‘Biserica Buna Vestire’ lead by Traian Pascalau and the children’s activities focussed ‘Poiana’ lead by Scottish couple Alex and Heather Chalmers.

Grass Roots at the Lighthouse Church

Daniel Bote and his team at Lighthouse own a building seating 100 people with a small amount of land on the outskirts of Constanta. His young team were enthusiastic and keen to work together to provide sports for their community. Work had already begun to level and seed the small patch of ground they currently have to make it suitable for sports.

Daniel and Sorin

With low fences and adjoining neighbours being an issue Steve Wright introduced the concept of ‘Futsal’, a smaller version of football that could be played with a special ball designed not to bounce, and their land could be used for 2 versus 2 tournaments. Lighthouse principle Youth Worker Sorin Nicolae is spearheading the project and is keen to invest in the youth to be able to deliver this service to the community.The Lighthouse Church are ambitious and showed us a plot of ground they have their eye on for the future and how they would include within their development plans allowance for sport space. In the meantime finance is needed to provide equipment and a good Futsal pitch which could be used to bring all the benefits of sport to their suburb.

Futsal

To the Beach with Biserica Buna Vestire

Traian Pascalau introduced us to one of his key leaders, a young man named Matthew who had dreams to take the sporting programme they already had to the next level. Again finding space for sport was an expensive problem and we looked at using the local beach as a venue. This was greeted with enthusiasm; programmes and methods, including creating incentives for participation were discussed.

Constanta Beach

A Pioneering work with Children and Young People

Set in a small village around a 40 minute drive from the centre of Constanta and based in their home Scottish couple Alex and Heather Chalmers are doing a startling work within their community. Backed by strong UK connections and a regular supply of short-term support teams they have been able to develop good meeting facilities and a large play area for the community children to use and from which they run a successful children’s club.

Behind the play area is a large undeveloped plot of land that they would like to convert into a sports field. Sport in Action will work with them to resource them with ideas and games as well as advise them on how to maximise the engagement of young people as they begin to provide sports programmes.

Galati

The final leg of the team's reconnaissance took them to Galati, an industrial city with a population of 400,000. On a map of the entire city the only green spaces seen were the two cemeteries on the outskirts. The ‘Hope’ community organisation led by Nelu Chirita, have an experienced sports coach named Marcel on their board who is looking to develop tennis coaching. Just behind the organisation's hired premises a small enclosed concrete courtyard lies unused. It was decided that the group would approach the landlord and with the necessary finance, perhaps see the area turned into a small scale tennis court from which to begin coaching.

End of Pre-Season

Sports in Action is gathering momentum and we are excited about the envisioned people we have met and look forward to journeying together to being impacting communities across Romania. Steve Wright's support of all projects will continue via open channels of communication and we look to June 2011 as a key date for leadership and coaching development for all our project partners. In the meantime we look to work with our partners in raising the necessary funds to instigate the action plans developed. There are opportunities for individuals, companies and organisations to get involved by sponsorship/donation of both finance and sports equipment. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Everything is poised for kick-off in Romania!

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