“Regional Youth initiative for Football Development in Baltic’s” (RYFDB) (link to an article about project) is a project that is led by Baltic Football School and implemented together with its partners FC Elva (Estonia), Siauliai FA (Lithuania) and Valmiera Glass VIA/Valmiera FC (Latvia).

Following a successful kick-off of the project and inaugural meeting (link to previous article), all involved parties have had 3 months to begin implementing project activity plan.

Through January aforementioned project partners conducted a research online about key project topics – health, trauma prophylaxis, basics of nutrition, sleep regime during intense load conditions, safety provisions and basics of international good practice with regards to training considering age of participant – that were later discussed, and ideas exchanged amongst all the involved parties.

Partners in Siaulia FA with Dzintars Kazaks

Following the research and as a result of productive discussions project partners decided to develop questionnaires for both parents and kids to gain an insight and evaluate the current situation within their own football clubs.

Through February each of the project partners took developed questionnaires back to their own clubs and handed them out to various age group kids and their parents.
In March all these questionnaires were collected back from the involved individuals who took part.
Since then the work has begun to analyse the information gained and to better understand and evaluate current situation within each of the project partner organisations.