The Sports and Recreation Commission will host the National Recreation and Wellness Conference in Harare on 12 July 2018. The conference will run under the theme, “Unlocking Recreation and Wellness potential for socio – economic development”.
It is expected that the conference will be attended by various stakeholders who include:
1. Local Authorities both urban and Rural
2. Public and Private Recreational Facilities such as Games Parks, Safari Parks
3. Boart Operators, Owners of Amusement Parks among others
4. Schools, Tertiary Institutions
5. The Corporate World
6. Vocational Institutions
7. NGOs involved with sport, other Parastatals and National Sport Associations
The Acting Director General Joseph Muchechetere gave an overview of the state of Recreation and Wellness in the country, other speakers will include Titus Zvomuya the SRC Board Member who will speak on how to promote Recreation and Wellness at school, Vocational Training Centres, Tertiary Institutions and the Workplace. Other speakers will also dwell on the socio- economic gains to be derived from the Recreation and Wellness to the nation and the strategies to be put in place in order to achieve such.
Other key issues that will deliberated upon will be good Corporate Governance and Compliance for the providers of Recreation in the country and SRC Chairman Edward Siwela will take the delegates on that topic. To cap it all will be the Minister of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Hon. Kazembe Kazembe who will loom into the Government policy relating to Recreation and Wellness.
SRC’s Sport Development Manager Martin Dururu will lead the discussions on Recreation and Wellness Strategy which will be incorporated National Sport and Recreation Strategy whose process of crafting has gathered momentum. We are also going to use this platform to interface with the Corporate World because we have noted a positive development of late whereupon many corporates are now encouraging their employees to engage in wellness programmes. This is good in that they will naturally reduce the occurrence of non-communicable diseases such Hypertension, Sugar diabetics and others. It is our convention that once you have workers who are fit, levels of absenteeism without reasonable cause will come down drastically, and thus increasing on productivity. Another key derivative of work based wellness programme is that it promotes unity and teamwork. It will be difficult if not impossible for any organization to attain its goals if there is unity of purpose and teamwork. It is through such teamwork and unity purpose that Corporate Bodies will be able to attain their commercial goals which will translate into economic growth for the nation all through Recreation and Wellness.
The conference will be charged a modest fee of $100 per delegate as a way of cost recovery and also infusing commercialization into sport and recreation.
A total of 150 are expected to attend the Conference.