MUKWIMA CHILALA writes
THE Olympic Youth Development Centre (OYDC) says the response and appreciation that its facilities had continued receiving from show goers visiting its stands at the Agriculture and Commercial Show is overwhelming.
Speaking during an exhibition at the show under the theme ‘Embracing Industrial Development’, OYDC executive director Frederic Chitangala said the facilities had continued receiving interest from people.
Chitangala said before the start of the show, management had embarked on a sensitisation inviting people to its stand, which was located in the Ministry of Sport exhibition hall.
He said the multi-sport facility had continued to serve its purpose of offering different facilities to the community who had continued patronising its centre.
”We are still far from where we are supposed to be, but we appreciate the interest we are receiving from people who continue visiting our stand,” he said.
The radio sensitisation programs we had embarked on has generated a lot of interest from people who continue visiting our stand as we are also receiving inquiries from people teachers wishing to be part of our training that we shall be starting later this month.
Chitangala said the Olympic Centre would this month conduct a workshop for school teachers targeting those who taught sports and physical education in schools.
He said the workshop was aimed at capacitating teachers with skills and knowledge in Sports Science, Safe Sports and Nutrition in Sports.
Chitangala said the operations of the Olympic Centre had since April last years improved because it had overcome its biggest challenge, which was bringing back the lost interest from sports federations coming to use facilities.
He said before April very few sports bodies made use of the facilities making it financially unstable.
“We have been inviting different sports federations to make use of our sports facilities so we could generate resources because we make them pay for using our space,” Chitangala said.
“Ever since we started inviting the federations to come here, we have since stopped having financial challenges such as payment of salaries for our staff which was a big challenge as our staff could go months without pay.”
