Setting up senegalese wrestling academies for Diembering youth

Project supported by Casamasanté

Established in 2013, Casamasanté Association has fallen within an educational approach to people's health in view of preventing the onset of pathologies impossible to treat locally on account of insufficient health care offers.

The project consists in setting up a freely accessible traditional wrestling academy and introducing an annual championship in the lower areas of Casamance. In addition to the wrestling courses per se, some sporting activities shall be integrated into programmes for the building of children's (both girls and boys) resilience and resistance capacity. These activities shall be carried out inside various schools and in "Youth centres" In the targeted. In this project, Casamasanté shall be assisted by the Fédération Sportive et Gymnique du Travail (FSGT) established in 1934, which promotes every person's right of access to sport with the object of developing activities tailored to their needs.

Context

In Senegal, just as in other parts of the world, the falling mortality rates go hand in hand with changes in the hierarchy of death causes, with the presence of fewer transmissible infections, whereas non-transmissible infections (such as cardio-vascular diseases, cancers and diabetes), are growing in frequency. The proportion of deaths due to cardiovascular diseases has been rising steadily going from 8% of all the deaths in 1990 to 16% in 2016.

Through traditional wrestling, Casamasanté Association carries out preventive actions that have proven their efficiency in France (lower cardio-vascular risk factors). It shall be assisted in the project’s implementation and deployment by the Fédération Sportive et Gymnique du Travail (FSGT) and shall benefit from both its expertise in the field of sport practice tailored to the young and its experience in project implementation overseas.

Objectives

Proposing to youngsters an organisational and structural environment that helps them to access varied, attractive and safe physical activities with the suitable equipment
Provide the material and institutional conditions for practice so that the young may apply any acquired knowledge and skills
Considerably reducing the recurrence of non-transmissible infections among the young
Reinforcing social cohesion in Casamance, which, for a long time has been said to be a zone of tension, by staging championships.

Activities

Holding annual championships with the various targeted communities’ wrestling academies
Recruiting and training sporting mobilisers in the wrestling academy
Promoting regular physical activity to ward off sedentariness and obesity among the young
Sensitising the elderly on the prevention of non-transmissible infections and holding free screening sessions

Impacts

The targeted population consists of boys and girls, of middle-school intermediate level, namely between 10 and 15 years of age living in Diembering Commune.
Over the programme’s 3-year term, the total number of affected children shall be 25,000 youngsters, among whom 1,800 are school-goers and 700 middle-school goers with emphasis on the girls’ commitment.