More than 100 volunteers from 22 regions of Ukraine completed the first stage of training in Kyiv. They will become organizers of "Open Football Festivals" — a project by the Ukrainian Association of Football and regional associations, implemented under the donor program "Restoration and Resilience Led by Youth in Ukraine."

Two seminars over a week

The first training was attended by representatives of ten regions: Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Rivne, Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi and Chernivtsi.

The second group included participants from Vinnytsia, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Kharkiv, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions, as well as the city of Kyiv.

Who trained the volunteers

The program was presented by Deputy Head of the Amateur and Mass Football Department at the UAF Yevheniy Stolitenko and Deputy Director of the Institute for Content Modernization in Education of Ukraine Galyna Kolomoeць.

Leading Ukrainian experts — Olena Timoshenko, Tetiana Malychko, Liana Kopilova, Vitaliy Titaryuk, Serhiy Chesheyko, Yuriy Lutsenko, Oleksii Lazarenko — and a child protection officer from the UAF Daria Didenko also joined the training.

Organizers familiarized themselves with the project's concept and content: child development and interaction, fun games, football games and technical exercises.
 

Photo: Dan Balashov

The program covered the following blocks:

• psychological support for children — innovative material developed specifically for the project;
• mine awareness — how to talk about risks from explosive objects and war-related emergencies in a child-friendly way;
• safety and protection of children in football — training by an officer from the UAF.

The main theme of all sessions was youth leadership: motivation to participate in mass football, qualities of a good coach, the role of values, effective communication and support for volunteers' mental health.

Participants learned to analyze opportunities, assess resources and risks, work as young leaders, set SMART goals and plan activities. A valuable aspect of the seminars was the exchange of experiences among regions regarding the implementation of mass children's football projects in communities.

Theory and practice

The training sessions were held in two formats: interactive seminars and practical work on a synthetic field at the UAF Training Complex for preparing youth and junior national teams.

Upon completion of the training, volunteers received certificates as leaders of mass football from UAF General Secretary Ihor Gryshchenko.
 

Photo: Dan Balashov