Moldova Pioneering Kin-ball through MOVE project

Project : MOVE 20 Oct 2011 | psychosocial

Miguel Sanchez Gomez is in Moldova with the International Organization for Migration working as a project assistant in migration and management. We asked him what his affiliation to Terre des hommes and to the sport called Kin-ball was and about the training of MOVE animators.

How did you come into contact with Terre des hommes?

I live in Switzerland. When I came to Moldova two months ago I knew about Terre des hommes and I learned about their MOVE project. Suddenly I had an idea this idea that working for IOM would give me the possibility to do something with Tdh since the two are partners. Since I have been playing Kin-ball for two years already, I thought it would be easy to get involved in the MOVE project with this game. If I can do my hobby here, in Chisinau, it’s great for me. I met the Delegate and he agreed that we can do a first Kin-ball training session within the MOVE project.

Are you an amateur or of a more professional level in this sport?

We have a Kin-ball federation in Switzerland and we are 15 to 20 people that play regularly as national team. So far, Switzerland has 2 participations, one at the World Championship in Canada and last year we went to the European Championship in France.

Today was your first day as a coach in Moldova. Do you also train other people in Switzerland?

Today was the very first day when Kin-ball was played in Moldova. In Switzerland I do train, but it’s more introducing the sport as school activity. For 2 years now we try to promote this sport, in order to have Swiss championship – that’s our goal. So we go to schools and we talk to teachers and present this sport in schools. A lot of people heard about it, and they ask us if we can implement an activity for the summer school break. And the people are actually playing Kin-ball, even in schools it is a very well known sport. And they are thinking about teaching this sport to professionals, the future sport teachers. So that’s what we want, to train trainers. And little by little, maybe train in some private clubs and then we can have a championship.

We also had an event –“Kid Games”. It’s like Olympic Games for children, organized in few regions in Switzerland at the same time. They always invite a new sport and this year we were invited there and at the end of it all, it was one day when all the children,* more then 2000, played Kin-ball*, team by team. So I am quite used to playing with children, doing introduction lessons and just presenting and demonstrating this sport.

How was the training of today?

The people were all a bit tired but very enthusiastic from the beginning till the end. It was good to see that they were interested in this game. It was the first time for me to train so many women, but they had a lot of energy.

Today we had a first view of what the game is. It’s a pity we didn’t have enough time to talk about Kin-ball, this big balloon and how this game can be introduced in the MOVE project. I know they play a lot of psychosocial games with children and one of our goals was not only to play Kin-ball as a sport, but also to use this activity as a tool to motivate the children to do a new thing and to try to do some mini games with this big ball. At the beginning of the training, i.e., we played this train game, to get the ball from one side of the field to the other. It was just a way to show them how to take the ball, to take control of the ball, but also with an emphasis on the team spirit, because they needed each other in order to transfer the ball to the other side. I always try to implement this kind of games in trainings.
Also the main goal for Tdh was to introduce this game in schools, because the ones they have are not enough. For this the animators can think about how to use it for the psychosocial activities. However, it was also the occasion for me to learn more about these social games they play, because I am not an MGS trainer.

When I read about the MOVE project I thought Kin-ball would fit. That’s why they were enthusiastic about this game and agreed to do this training. From the very beginning I agreed that this sport fits absolutely with this project with all the values, principles, the fair play, respect, communication, and if you don’t have all these things, you cannot play Kin-ball. So that was my idea in the beginning and I think it was a success, because everyone kept asking me for the ball, for this and for that. So now the second step is to try maybe to find a way either to fundraise a little bit for these balls, or I’ll try on my own to facilitate this somehow. We also want to go to Soroca, Ungheni and Chisinau on weekends and do the same thing, but with the children and one or two of these animators, so for them it will be a second training, and for the children it will be the occasion to play. And maybe if we can do it, let’s say, once a month, it would be nice. These are our plans for the future .

As for the future activities Tdh staff is developing a program involving Kin-ball, training the animators and hoping that the game can be implemented in the MOVE project activities, as the participants’ enthusiasm about it was obvious.The participants loved the game and say that it would be a really nice sport for their pupils to do*, but they do need the Kin-ball inventory, especially the OMNIKIN ball. “It’s extraordinary, thrilling and very interesting. I would very much like to organize it with my pupils.” – tells us one of the teachers, MOVE trainer with Tdh.

The gymnasium principal from Ungheni, participant at the Trainer of Training of Trainers, Irina Bodruc is highly impressed by Kin-ball, wishing to bring it to her community: “I would like to mention the last game that we played, a game that is pioneered in Moldova – Kin-ball. Thanks to the good training abilities of Miguel we were able to understand very well al the techniques and the rules of the game in order to play it correctly and to have fun while doing that. I can’t wait to practice it with my children from the community.” (MS)

KIN-BALL was invented in Canada in 1987 by Dario Demers, who was looking for an activity that would motivate people to participate in physical activities. He came up with the most efficient system, creating not two teams, as in the usual games, but three, this way the scoring system increases the parity between the teams, so each of them is actively involved in the game until the very last minute – this balances the game level and promotes participation.

He started by training Physical Education professors from universities who were looking for a new way of amusing, entertaining and training people, as the physical activities amongst population had dropped. So they had implemented this game in the schools as extracurricular activity for the pupils.