The opening conference of the Parainspired Project in Indjija

The opening conference of the “Social integration through parasport – Parainspired!” project has been held at assembly of the municipality Indjija. The speakers at the conference were Vladimir Batez, Provincial Secretary for Sports and Youth, Vladimir Gak, President of Indjija Municipality, Jasmin Hodžić, representative of the Olympic Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Vidosava Enderić, Director of the European Affairs Fund of AP Vojvodina.

The attendees were greeted by the host, Mr. Gak, on behalf of Indjija Municipality, who expressed the hope that project would discover some new para-athletes who would proudly represent the Republic of Serbia at future world and European competitions. On behalf of the partner institution from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jasmin Hodzić, addressed the audience and invited the participants to establish new partnerships and create projects in sport. He finished his speech with the closing words “Inspire yourself, inspire others around you”.

“First of all, this project came as a response to the needs of athletes with disabilities, but this project is not only theirs. This is our project. This project is an attempt to facilitate persons with disabilities in achieving their goals. On the other hand, this is an opportunity for us, as a society, to engage more actively in the promotion of success of persons with disabilities in sport and all other areas and to offer understating and assistance and provide equal opportunities for all regardless of the different starting positions life imposed on us”, said Enderić.

The opening conference was concluded by Mr. Batez, Provincial Secretary for Sports and Youth, who especially thanked our Paralympic athletes, Mr. Zlatko Kesler, selector of the Paralympic table tennis team and vice-president of the Paralympic Committee of Serbia, and Ms. Borislava Perić-Ranković, Serbia’s national team player in table tennis for persons with disabilities, who won the gold medal at the Paralympic Games, the world and European championships.

Our prominent Paralympic athletes attempted, from their experience, to present to the participants the problems persons with disabilities face when wishing to take up a sport, as well as their experience before they started doing sports professionally. Zlatko Kesler, Vice-president of the Paralympic Committee of Serbia, talked about the importance of cooperation with other countries, in this case with partners from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Borislava Perić-Ranković highlighted that it took a lot of effort, work and sweat to achieve top results in sports and that the support of the community and institutions was important on that road.

The “Social integration through parasport – Parainspired!” project is co-funded by European Union funds under the IPA II CBC Programme Serbia-Bosnia and Herzegovina 2014-2020 with the support of the Ministry of European Integration of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Directorate for European Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The funds allocated for the implementation of the project amounts to EUR 263,914.43, whereas the co-financing of the European Union amounts to EUR 224,327.27. The Contracting Authority of the project is the Ministry of Finance, Department for Contracting and Financing of European Union Funded Programmes of the Republic of Serbia.
The project is jointly implemented by the Provincial Secretariat for Sports and Youth of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Olympic Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina, European Affairs Fund of the Autonomous Pokrajina Vojvodina and municipality of Indjija.