The problem of low physical activity among Ukrainian children is vexing not for Ukrainian citizens, but for the world community as well. Hence the UEFA program on mass football development, Open Fun Football School, will be launched in Ukraine in August. Our state was no random choice. According to the data of the State Institute of Family and Youth’s Development (DIRSM), some four out of five schoolchildren in Ukraine almost never practice sports, whereas half of schoolchildren, even if they take running, swimming, or play dynamic games, do this at PT lessons, for 30 minutes a week at most. Instead children spend most of their leisure time in front of computers or TV sets.
Experts believe that solving this problem requires the popularization of mass sports and establishing new facilities. Otherwise, we will continue to have a sick generation. According to the DIRSM, eight percent of schoolchildren acquire diseases of the digestive apparatus in the period of their school studies, and five percent have problems with their spine, metabolism, eyesight and skin. Nearly every second school graduate catches infectious diseases on a regular basis.
Therefore UEFA’s new project is what Ukrainian youth need. The press service of Ukraine’s Football Federation has reported that this program had been successfully implemented in the Balkan countries, Transcaucasia, Middle East, and Moldova. The project’s initiators noted that the aim of the Open Fun Football Schools is to focus attention on children’s football and the pleasure of playing rather than the results.
There is now a plan to open 17 football camps in Ukraine each year, where boys and girls who do not take up football professionally will be invited. At the same time, schools and children will be provided with the necessary sports equipment. Some 50 coaches working in Ukrainian schools have undergone special studies at international seminars in Moldova, whose Open Fun Football Schools Program has been recognized by the UEFA as a project of the year in European football.
Now it is time for Ukraine to host seminars, which will be attended by nearly 300 Ukrainian coaches and teachers. In the period of Aug. 1 through 10, three such events will take place at the new Skif Instruction Base, located in the village of Novopavlivka, Bakhchysarai raion, in the Crimea. Later on the relay race will be passed on to Chernivtsi oblast. On Aug. 10 through 13 a seminar will be held at the Soniachna Dolyna Recreation Complex in the village Boiany, Novoselytsia raion. Besides the project supervisors, their fellows from Denmark and Georgia will also attend the seminar. On the whole, this year our country will be hosting 17 festivals of the Open Fun Football Schools Program: 12 in the Crimea, two in Chernivtsi oblast, and one in Odesa, Vinnytsia, and Ternopil oblasts each.
