Ziggy Tabacznik is former judo athlete who fought Nuno Delgado in the past. He is now representing school judo in the Netherlands a big project in grass roots, sports participation. Tabacznik was one of the speakers at the Social Inclusion Seminar in Lisbon last week.
Tabacznik is member of the judo commission of the IJF. They are specialist in Grass Root marketing. We do this for companies, for the IJF, for federations.
“We learn people how to fall, we have table a tennis program and we advise governmental bodies to change their policies in getting it more efficient.
This program runs since 2005 and inspires people in the age of 6-12 years. How can we be of added value for the society with our sport. Not just with judo but also other sports. But there must be an added value, we want to create a ‘brand’. Our vision is to get judo in primary schools, always! Not just for six weeks. We have been developing this program to get more children to the clubs.
We have 12-weeks program. 6 weeks in the school and 6 weeks outside school at a club. You need to hook them, it must be fun. We organize clinics for the children and their parents. It’s important to involve them as well. In the first 6 weeks we prepare them to go to the clubs. We facilitate the federation, they only have to inspire the kids.”
“The success of the program is the uniformity of the 12-weeks program. The added value is the reason for your funding. If you can convince companies to see there’s a huge marketing value. So the question is not the money, but health and saving money. How you can save money in insurances, life health instead of spending money? The most important thing is the marketing communication power. There’s one consistent message with this program. This is interesting for enterprises as they want to be involved in social aspects and programs, also from the point of view of health and having healthy employees.
We have a year budget of approx. 500,000 including 3 full employees, 7,500 judogi and 6,000 square meters of tatami. Participation raises steady and progressively.
During the lessons we are busy with educating. Not all children will go to the clubs, but in the 12 weeks they can build up some knowledge to give back to their parents or friends. That is social inclusion. Also the kids are aware of their position among other kids.
But we are not finished, we want also bring it into the home, games that you can practice with your parents at home, some exercises, not specifically judo practice. Also on other things like health, obese, nutrition and be of more added value for the families. The aim is for the next four years, like an Olympic cycle, to grow to 100,000 children, now there are already 20,000 kids. Each kid is in contact with at least 10 people, parents, friends, your inner circle.
With our ambition 100,000 people active this is a channel of a million people which is seriously interesting for an enterprise.”
If you like to know more about the Dutch project, visit http://www.schooljudo.nl