Judo, an educational sport par excellence, is particularly suitable for young children and what better way than to start at school. This is what the Central American country of Honduras understood. With a population exceeding ten million inhabitants, the country presents a very young face, perfectly suited to the implementation of judo development initiatives.
The first school, serving as a pilot project, is the Instituto Salesiano María Auxiliadora in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.
"In recent weeks we've been working on the implementation plan and we fine-tuned all the details with the school authorities. This created huge expectation among the parents and children. We have prepared our coaches according to the Judo in Schools philosophy and we have been preparing all the logistics in our federation. In the end, we doubled our expectations and we registered many more children than we expected. Eventually we managed to add a second 'Entertrainer' and more judogi," said Luis Valle, the president of the Honduras Judo Federation.
Organising such a programme is not an easy task but the outcome can only be positive. "We've had many meetings to prepare everything. We organised all the details about the judo classes. We had to choose the training area, determine the timetable and the groups of children," explained President Valle.
Another school, Instituto Taular, is very close to a start, as soon as the approval from the authorities arrives and the federation is already planning more launches in the future. The future, this is exactly what we are talking about here. Schools, children, judo, those are the ingredients for a present and future success. There is no doubt that this investment will pay off.