THE Government of Guyana, behind President Irfaan Ali, will be reaching out to former athletes to work with his Administration as part of his push to develop sports from the Community level.

“Another programme we are going to launch is a programme that will focus on physical education at a community level and at a school level. At a school level we will have a concentration of schools serviced by a professional coach,” President Ali said yesterday at the Guyana National Stadium.

The President said that he has already tasked the Minister of Youth, Culture and Sport, Charles Ramson Jr, with looking at ex-athletes from the various sporting disciplines that have retired to be brought back to be trained in a mentorship and coaching programme.

This, President Ali emphasised, has to be a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport.
According to President Ali, the former National athletes “will be part of transforming the mind, the mind-set, transforming the sporting environment and also our interest in sports across the country. It is very important we give a very high interest in sports.”

“Countries can develop and focus on everything else but if you don’t make the investment on sports development then you will lose the interest in different sporting activities along the way and we don’t want that to happen,” the Head-of-State said.

The President also noted that the Government and the Ministry by extension is taking a “bottom up approach” to the development of sports and culture, adding that “the entire approach by the Government and the Ministry is community engagement, community involvement, community participation, community ownership, community spirit, and once we build this type of integration across all the communities it will resound to the one Guyana that we want to create.”