“Young people will gain much through well-organised sport programmes. They will develop healthier and active lifestyles, learn how to work within a team, aim high for success and how to work hard to achieve goals. Sport offers girls in particular a good opportunity to develop leadership skills and work as part of a team toward a common goal.”
This was the message relayed by the minister responsible for sport, Louis Galea, during the launch yesterday of two new sport programmes, Girls on the Move and the Community Sport Programme designed by the Kunsill Malti ghall-iSport (KMS).
The Girls on the Move programme (GOM), aimed at young females between the ages of nine and 14, focuses on providing recreation in a two-hour programme of activities on a weekly basis in a safe and supportive environment. The Community Sport Programme (CSP) is a national programme in collaboration with the Education Division and will take the form of an after-school programme from 2:45pm to 4:15pm with sessions held once a week in blocks of 10 sessions per term.
The programme will make use of the sport facilities of public schools and four such schools have been identified: St. Joseph Junior Lyceum (Paola), Luqa Primary School, Qormi (San Gorg) Primary School, and Siggiewi Primary School. The pilot project will run between the March and May.
Speaking about the disciplines that are being offered in the GOM, Franco Azzopardi, KMS chairman, said that these will include basketball, football, handball, netball, and volleyball. The objectives of the CSP are to promote a healthier lifestyle through physical activity among school-aged children, their parents and the entire community; to increase participation in quality, safe and enjoyable sport activities; to facilitate accessibility to sport and to stimulate community involvement in sport.
Minister Galea spoke about the importance of sport for all and focused on the benefits of sport for girls. He said that sport activities have an obvious positive link to excellent physical growth in children. Athletics were among the best antidotes to self-destructive behaviour such as alcohol and drug abuse, and give a boost to self-confidence and self-esteem.
Dr Galea said that parents needed to overcome the natural inclination which made them prefer academic work to sport. He said that all studies showed that children who had an active lifestyle and who participated in sport were more likely to have better academic success.
Dr Galea said these programmes were among initiatives the government was taking to tackle the problem of inactivity and obesity among youth and their families. He said that at the age of five, 13 per cent of the boys and 11 per cent of the girls were overweight or obese. At the age of 10, 19 per cent of the boys and 24 per cent of the girls were obese.
Within the 26 to 64 age group, 22 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women were obese. He said that overweight children were more likely to be overweight or obese as adults and that overweight adults were at a higher risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, some types of cancer and other diseases.