Kicking Off a New Era: China Unveils Groundbreaking Football Spark Project to Revolutionize the Sport
The First Large-Scale Football Teaching Service in China: Western Plan Football Spark Project Launched
On September 20, a symposium on the pre-job training class for the Western Plan Volunteer Football Teaching Service was held at Guizhou Sports Vocational College. At the meeting, the Western Plan Football Spark Project was officially launched. After completing the 12-day training, 138 volunteers will be assigned to primary and secondary schools in 27 counties (cities and districts) in Bijie City, Zunyi City, Qiannan Prefecture, and Qianxinan Prefecture to carry out football teaching services for 1 to 3 years. This project is the first large-scale football teaching service in the country.
The Western Plan Football Spark Project is jointly carried out by the Guizhou Provincial Sports Bureau, the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League, and the Guizhou Provincial Department of Education. Based on the relevant documents of the Western Plan for College Students Volunteer Service, the project will select 138 Western Plan volunteers with sports-related majors, football expertise, or voluntary football teaching from the newly recruited volunteers in 2024 across the country to provide football teaching services in primary and secondary schools in counties. After 1 to 3 years, they will be employed through coach grade training and school coach position setting.
Ma Lei, Secretary of the Party Committee and Director of the Guizhou Provincial Sports Bureau, encouraged the football teaching volunteers to study hard and do a good job in popularizing football at the grassroots level. He said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a foot, and volunteers should sow the seeds of hope for football, and encourage more people to participate in football by building teams, competitions, files and teams. Volunteers should seriously study football teaching, lead the team well, be willing to contribute, work hard for a long time, and do a bright football career with a true spirit of dedication.
From September 19 to 30, the football teaching volunteers received training at Guizhou Sports Vocational College. According to the E-level coach training standards of the Chinese Football Association, they will conduct systematic training focusing on basic theory, basic training, and event organization. After passing the assessment, this group of football teaching volunteers will receive the E-level coach certificate. The volunteers participating in the project have two main tasks: one is to cultivate the interest of young people in football, popularize football knowledge, and make this sport more widely carried out at the grassroots level; the other is to discover and select good seedlings in grassroots training, improve their competitive level, and reserve strength for Guizhou football.
Guizhou’s football youth training is led by the State Sports General Administration’s support for the construction of a national-level football youth training center in Bijie, and the construction of football youth training centers in Guiyang, Zunyi, Qiannan, and Qianxinan is promoted simultaneously, forming a ”one main and four auxiliary” Guizhou football youth training pattern. In the process of building Guizhou’s football youth training system, the problem of lack of grassroots football coaches is more prominent, and the development of the Western Plan Football Spark Project will make up for this shortcoming.
