The local businessmen of the Polyanska amalgamated hromada in the Zakarpattia Oblast financially support the building of the children and youth sports school, so children do not pay for it at all.

Author: Dmytro Syniak

In the Polyanska AH of the Zakarpattia Oblast, a newly built children and youth sports school was opened in September last year. Now it has 95 children.

After amalgamation in 2016, the villages of the hromada received new financial opportunities. So, private sanatoria began to grow like mushrooms. Now the Polyanska AH has about 300 private entrepreneurs, 40 private hotels and 60 officially registered green mansions. The last year's budget of the hromada made nearly UAH 60 million, and half of these funds is hromada’s own revenues.

... Two football fields with artificial cover and a metal fence near the foot of the high mountain immediately draw attention. What else can the village boast of? Near the fields there is a large two-storey building with a slope roof. This is a newly built sports complex, but not at the expense of the hromada. However, the hromada may use it free of charge.

 

 

 

In the building of the sports complex there are gyms for volleyball and fighting.

At the door we met with two guys. One of them is Stas Uligants, the other is Artem Fenents. Both boys are ten years old. Stas has been playing football for a year, Artem has been playing football for several months.

 

 

“At first, it was difficult with the coaches,” tells Stanislav Toruni, director of the Polyana children and youth sports school. “We took the staff of several school physical education teachers. Also, one internally displaced person expressed a desire to become a football coach. And recently a coach for karate, who lives in Svalyava, that is 10 km away from Polyana, has agreed to work with us. At the beginning, there were few children, but then they started coming with friends.”

Now, on the basis of the Polyana children and youth sports school, there is a completely free school camp, which could not even accept everyone. Children do not only play football, but they also engage in "clubs of interests": clubs of foreign languages ​​(English, German); club of active games (basketball, volleyball, football, kickboxing) and the club of talent development (drawing, dancing, singing) in it.

 

 

The hromada provides the school with everything necessary: ​​balls, sports equipment, uniforms, etc. And all the children are engaged in the school free of charge. Also, the sum of UAH 700 annually comes from the budget of the hromada on salaries for trainers. But the maintenance of all sports facilities lies on the public association "Sports Club Olympia". "Olympia" gives these buildings in lease to the hromada free of charge.

The initiator of such a scheme was the head of Polyanska AH Ivan Drohobetskyi.

"From the very beginning, we did not need sports achievements, but the health of our youth," says Ivan Drohobetskyi. "In fact, the creation of a sports school is one of the steps in implementing our public health programme. We have set our goal to involve children in sports as much as possible. I am convinced that every hryvnia, invested in the development of children, is a million in the way out, because if we do not accustom children today to dancing, sports, etc., tomorrow we will have problems with them".

 

 

On the balance of the Polyanska AH, there is also the former rayon art school, which has 160 children.

 

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