Sport in Action - Starting small but thinking big

Sport in Action is assisting the development of community sports programmes across Romania.  Here's the latest news from one project in the small community of Poiana.

In May Steve Wright and project development staff from the Proton Foundation,  visited Alex and Heather Chalmers who manage a small church community centre in Poiana, Romania.

Poiana is a village about 15kms outside Constanta on the Black Sea coast. The people who live in the village are very poor and rely mainly on the agriculture around the village for work; when the weather turns bad for the winter months there is no work making life hard for the small farmers and their families.

Alex told us, “There’s absolutely nothing for the young people to do here in the village, so last year at the back of the centre we built a play area for the children and added a basket ball court for the teenagers.  When Steve came he gave us ideas of how we could expand our activities further, making the most of the what we currently have, especially with the teenagers in mind.  We took a rough piece of ground behind our property, cleared it, cut down the grass and levelled it as best we could for football.   During the summer we added goal posts  and as a result we now have 10-15 teenagers coming every night to play on the pitch.”

“With the finances we have recently received from Sport in Action we plan to put up lights so that they can continue to play football even through the dark nights. This will be great for the teenagers and young adults in the village.  Our plans are  to open up the facilities even more and more to the community. We have also been in contact with some other organisations in the city about having some competitive football matches."

“On the back of this we have started to run a youth club every Friday evening with young people coming to the centre to play games, socialise and enter into discussions about life issues that affect them."

“Next year we are hoping to build an extension onto the building, as the existing centre is becoming too small. We hope to have a room where we can have some gym equipment and also introduce badminton. We are really excited about all of this and we would value your continued support for these ventures. It's a real opportunity to give something to the community here in Poiana and also to help provide a safe environment for the children and teenagers."

Sport in Action continue to provide help, support and advice to Alex and Heather as they look to grow their influence and impact  through sport on this small, but very needy community.

This is just one project that Sport in Action is looking to assist.  We could do so much more with your support.  Find out how you can get involved.