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The avenue by which the 2012 London Olympics bid team hoped to
enrich life is now being utilised in Nigeria and tutors who were benefactors of
the training programme have begun to see the dividends.

Inspiring Children ‘International Inspiration’ was born in
fulfilment of the promise that the London bid team for the 2012 Olympics made
when they were bidding to host the Games.

According to Olamipo Bello, Project Manager and representative
of the British council, International Inspiration aims to use to the power of
sports to enrich the lives of children. “It was observed that all around the
world there is a decline in sporting activities and we discovered that the best
way to do this was to reintroduce Physical Education (PE) that was gradually
disappearing from the school curriculum.” She said further that, “The aim of
the programme is to involve children and make sport an interesting avenue to
learn”. Sarah Thorp, a TOPS tutor explains more, “Basically what we aim to do
is to introduce new methods of teaching sports. We therefore make use of the
TOPS play cards which shows nice friendly and attractive pictures”.

The TOPS play cards are a series of cards, pointing out instructions
on how trainers and coaches can teach children basic movement, how to evaluate
the improvement of the children and how to adapt the games to suit the
individual ability of the children in a way that engages and interest the
child.

Thorp goes further to clarify that rather than it teaching one
particular sport, TOPS methodology helps the children to develop the
fundamentals of movement. “We use this method to help the children develop the
skills of balance, agility and coordination. The concept is to develop the
skills that apply to different games so as to acquire physical competence. We
want active children and developing these skills keeps the children active”.

The teacher’s part

The role of the teacher in all this is to provide support. “What
this programme aims to do is provide capacity for the children and one way by
which we can do that is through the help of the teacher and that is why we have
decided to train them first”, said Bello. Explaining further, Thorp said, “The
work of the teacher is to provide support, you could watch the children
playing, encourage them at play, evaluate their performance, ask them why they
did something the way they did it and ask them what they can do to improve.

“You also want to look at the ability and capability of each
child and adapt the games to suit each child. That way every child gets
involved without feeling left out.”

A profitable venture

A three day training programme held in November was the second
in the programme to train teachers and coaches of little children. Some of the
participants, who came for the first instalment held in June, spoke glowingly
of how the training translated into an interesting Physical Education (PE) time
with the children in their respective schools.

Christiana Okunade, a Physical and health education teacher with
the Federal Government College, Ijanikin, Lagos expressed delight at being
nominated. “In fact, this experience has been an eye opener. I never knew that
teaching Physical Education to children could be this interesting. The children
are so enthusiastic and that in itself is very encouraging to me the teacher.
They pick what I am telling them faster and it has taken PE from the realm of
the classroom, into the field. Now we are eager to try out all the things we have
learnt.”

Another of the tutors, Clement Dennis, who coaches children in
rugby, shares his experience, “The TOPS cards are very helpful for teaching the
children. They are more interested in the activities going on in the field and
are more willing to participate. Recently, they even organized some games
amongst themselves and one could see how well coordinated they were”.

He, in conjunction with Chinasa Ukandu, president of Youth Sport
Initiative, an organisation that works with less privileged children, hope to
also pass on this knowledge to others coaches and PE teachers of children who
were not as privileged as they were to be involved in the initial project.

Kabir Shehu from Government Girls College, Dala, Kano had this
to say, “I teach in a girls school and the girls are not usually interested in
sports. After my training programme however, the story changed. They are now
unusually very enthusiastic and are not afraid to give me suggestion on how we
can improve.

When I got back home, I began to teach them techniques in rugby
and you know that before this time they had never heard of the game but you
know because of the approach they were fascinated and started bringing their
friends. I learn from them every day. Presently, these girls are trying to organize
a sport festival within the school and you should see how excited they all are.
All these happened because we changed our techniques of teaching sports to
them.”

Another teacher, Aliyu Ahmed from, Government Secondary School,
Dambata, Kano, also shared his experience. “Before now, when we call the
children for physical training, we do not get a lot of them. But after the
first training exercise we had, I took back the materials for training and I
started teaching them with it. I later gave them some of the cards to take to
their hostels to be used to practice the things that were learnt. Do you know
that in the next week? More of the children joined us. Now I have over a
hundred children doing physical training.

We now even have a club, the International Inspiration Club and
I have already seen three students who can be trained to become young sport
leaders in my school”.

Moulding leaders through
sports

Young Sport Leaders’ are youths aged between 14 and 18, who have
learnt leadership skills through sports. “One of the aims of the UK is to
create Leaders through sports and this is being gradually achieved. The
children are allowed to be innovative and in the process, they build their
confidence”, says Bello. The Young Sport Leaders would be taught officiating
skills and would be volunteers at the London 2012 Olympics.

International Inspiration is a project that is delivered by the
British Council, UK sport and UNICEF. The project has so far been able to reach
about 5.3 million children in 14 countries. They just came into Nigeria in May
this year and they hope to see at least 36 teachers trained before the end of
the year.