March 4, 2023 - Sisak is the first city in Croatia to launch a long-term project to monitor the development of children from kindergarten to adolescence called Sisak Fit, the city administration reported on Friday.

As 24Sata writes, thirty anthropological assessments per child, carried out by an expert team of kinesiologists, doctors, educators, and teachers, will enable recognition of the child's physical tendencies for sports, health indicators, orientation values, and monitoring of their physical development. The excellent response from parents is quite encouraging, with 58 percent having readily accepted participation in the project.

As announced by the Sisak city administration, the first assessments began in Sisak kindergartens. These data will enable kinesiologists and parents to easily direct children to sports for which they have physical predispositions.

In addition, children who are found to have minor health problems, such as obesity, flat feet, or wrong posture, will be provided training through special programs to correct these conditions so that they do not cause more severe problems in the long term. The data collected in these assessments will also provide orientation values of the anthropological characteristics of the youngest Sisak residents and their physical constitution.

The Sisak Fit project is a continuation of the City of Sisak's investments in sports, as part of which the city was declared the European City of Sports in 2019. In the same year, it received the new Zibel Ice Hall; before that, the Caprag swimming pools were renovated, and in 2021 the City Sports Hall Zeleni Brijeg was built, which enables the work of clubs in indoor and ice sports.

Kindergarten and school children in Sisak have a skating school, a swimming school at the city pool, and an athletics school; the international Healthy Meal Standard for the highest quality nutritional meal for children has been introduced in the schools. In addition, kinesiologists are employed in kindergartens to guide children's physical development as professionally as possible.

The total support for sports in the city budget amounts to 2.7 million euros. The City of Sisak allocates more than 600,000 euros of support to clubs annually through the Association of Sports Associations.

This year, 33 thousand euros will be allocated from the city budget for the Sisak Fit project. It is implemented by the city's Association of Sports Associations in partnership with the Faculty of Kinesiology in Zagreb, kindergartens and elementary schools in Sisak, the Association of Kinesiologists and the Sisak Sports and Recreation Center, and in cooperation with the Croatian Association of Sports Psychologists.

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