ZIMBABWE was presented as the model country for the Federation International Volleyball (FIVB) president Ary Graca’s Africa Dream project, which is being implemented in several African countries, at the 2015 Confederation of African Volleyball (CAVB) Congress held in Algeria three weeks ago.
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It was a feather in the cap for the Zimbabwe Volleyball Association (ZVA), which has been working tirelessly for the past two years to ensure that the project — a brainchild of the FIVB president — is a success.
“Following visits by the CAVB representatives to our Africa Dream project centres in October and November, they were really impressed by how we are running our project,” ZVA vice-president and project director Enias Kondo said in an interview with Standardsport.
“Other countries were doing it differently from us but now the idea is that other African countries can model their projects around ours. It gives us a lot of confidence as an association that we are putting to good use our $50 000 per year grant for the project.
“It also puts us in a good position to get assistance from the continental board or even the international board in future, should we need some help.”
Graca’s vision is to create a global volleyball development trend by setting up centres of excellence that will be used to develop identified athletes at a young age and arranging all the keys for their involvement later on to their corresponding youth national teams. Zimbabwe in particular is looking to assemble from this project a team that would qualify for the Olympics and other global competitions by the year 2024.
Currently, ZVA has four Africa Dream project centres dotted around the country, that is in Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare and Gweru. Blakiston Primary School houses the Harare centre while the Bulawayo centre is at Evelyn High School with Baring Primary and Gunea Fowl High providing home for Mutare and Gweru centres respectively.
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“We would have loved to have a centre in every province if the funds were permitting, but we still try to reach far and wide having set-up some satellite centres in rural areas,” he said.
He revealed that ZVA had assigned some of the country’s best coaches to the centres of excellence which house an average of 45 young athletes. Former Zimbabwe senior men’s team coach Artwell Gororo is in charge of the Harare centre whose apprentices are between the ages of eight and 10.
Aaron Mutede, who is the Zimbabwe Under-23 coach, takes care of the eight to 10- year-olds in Mutare with Itsanang Abu Basutu training children in Gweru who are aged between 12 and 14. In Bulawayo, the female national team trainer Vulindlela Moyo takes charge of the 10 to 12-year-olds. Kondo also spoke about the recommendations by the CAVB representative Enzanai Madzivire where he visited the centres in October and November.
“The CAVB representative said there was need to spruce up our infrastructure as Zimbabwe has outdoor facilities for predominantly indoor sport. He also highlighted the need to increase the number of coaches assigned at centres while encouraging us to align ourselves to a cost-efficient budget.”
Apart from the CAVB representative, Sports and Recreation minister Makhosini Hlongwane threw his weight behind the project when he was briefed about it last month.
“There is a lot of talent which simply vanishes because no one can identify and nurture it. A project of this nature creates an enabling environment for talent identification and development,’ Hlongwane said.
Kondo said the minister was more impressed by the fact that the project takes into account the talent which lies untapped in rural areas. The Africa Dream project is also designed in a way that it will feed talent into the local clubs as the coaches who are part of the clubs will recommend players who excel to various clubs.
ZVA had an advantage in implementing the project in that it already had its long-term project called the Great Zimbabwe Talent Identification Programme, aimed at identifying future volleyball greats by establishing centres of excellence to capture the talent in all the provinces. However, the programme suffered due to lack of funding and has since paved way for the Africa Dream project. Besides having been clearly one of the best development programmes in 2015, the Africa Dream venture was beaten to the Annual National Sports Awards’ sport development of the year award.
