THE Ministry of Education (MOE), in collaboration with the Guyana Volleyball Federation (GVF), has held the ‘Cool Volley’ festival in four regions of Guyana. Regions Two, Three, Four and Six will host another festival and seminar tomorrow at the West Demerara Secondary School. Future festivals in each remaining region of Guyana will be executed to ensure that all schools are given a chance of participating in a Volleyball Festival.
This festival will form part of a wider project made possible through a partnership between the Ministry of Education, the GVF and the Federation Internacionale de Volleyball (FIVB).
As a result of the approved FIVB project proposal; the GVF and the Ministry of Education will execute ten (10) volleyball festivals per year, while providing approximately one thousand two hundred (1 200) ‘Cool Volley’ balls and four hundred volleyball nets to be donated to participating schools.
This Project forms part of the GVF’s plan to expand the popularity of the sport and to develop more elite players.
The project manager Mr Nicholas Fraser, who is also the Head of the Physical Education Unit of the Ministry of Education and General Secretary of the GVF, has gotten much support from the Ministry of Education and the Regional Education Departments as there is a great need for these partnerships.
The sport of volleyball has been modified slightly to ensure that Primary School-aged students may participate in this type of activity. Further, the National Centre for Educational Resource Development had produced a Manual for Mini-Volleyball in Primary Schools and Mini-Volleyball has been added to the Primary Schools Curriculum since 2007.
To date, festivals in Linden, Georgetown, Suddie and Lusignan have attracted thirty-five schools; the last Festival was held on July 3, 2012 at the Lusignan Community Centre ground.
At the Festival at Lusignan, teachers were reminded that the activity formed part of the Primary School Physical Education Curriculum and is another exercise that could form part of the recreational activities of the school. The facilitators from the Physical Education Department and the Volleyball Federation watched with keen attention as the teachers worked with the students to teach them the basics of Volleyball before the Festival began.
The Festival took the form of male and female non-competitive and continuous volleyball matches in which each team played a four- to five-minute match against each of the invited teams (totalling 9 matches). This activity lasted for just over an hour.
At the end of the Festival Mr Fraser, on behalf of Mr Shuffler, president of the GVF, thanked all the schools for their participation and presented each school with two ‘Cool Volley’ balls and a volley ball net to continue the activity in their schools. The captain of each team was also presented with a cool volley T-shirt.
Special thanks were extended to the Education Department of Region #4 and to the Chairperson of the Mon Repos-Reconnaissance Neighbourhood Democratic Council.
The participating Primary Schools from Region Four were: Chateau Margot Primary, Annandale Primary, Gibson Primary, St Paul’s Primary, Strathspey Primary, Virginia Primary, Cane Grove Primary, Swami Purnananda Primary and Ash Education Trust.