Glenview 3-Community Center

Welcome back to this week’s blog post, and a new part of our series discussing all of our summer adventures traveling from Belarus, to South Africa, and back to ZImbabwe. Last week, we discussed our arrival back into the country of Zimbabwe and how it was certainly a special homecoming. This week we are excited to begin sharing some information about the seminars we put on while in the process of growing the powerlifting in ZImbabwe.

It was truly an exciting time to be back. It goes without mentioning that getting to do what we had only dreamed of a year ago was supremely satisifying. Our first seminar was at the community center of Glenview in the Budirio District of Harare. This was just a day after arriving in Zim, but our excitement had us pumped and ready to begin. It is hard to describe the emotions of performing these seminars let alone the first one since we had no idea who or how many people will show up. Community centers in Zim mainly grow through word of mouth. The director of the center helps plan events (Which, up to this point have not been plentiful. This alone makes people question something when it does come.) and those hosting the events show up and wait to see who turns out. All of these seminars were performed for free and focused on teaching the form for the big three (squat, bench, and deadlift). They also worked to inform the community about the sport of powerlifting and our plans for growing it in Zimbabwe. The seminar at Glenview 3 started off without the huge crowd that we hoped we would see. It was discouraging at first, but in understanding the culture and knowing people usually can not even trust events to happen we took things in stride. A few men showed up telling us that they would go and tell their friends that we actually came. An hour past our original start time, we began, and what we thought would be just our team discussing business because no one was there, turned out to be around 20 men who showed up from all walks of life to learn about the sport. From that moment forward, the seminar was a success. The men took a few minutes to warm up to what we were bringing to share with them in terms of knowledge and the sport, but by the end we had several questions and we were even asked to return. Understanding again a cultural aspect in these areas is that it can sometimes be very hard to get the communities to support any initiative coming to their centers, but no matter where we went it seems we were always welcomed and invited back which was a blessing that we could have never dreamed up.

Below are some images from this first seminar that we are so happy to share with you. Many of you have been a part of our journey since the beginning helping us share posts and raise money. It is truly an amazing thing to be able to write less than a year later of the successes we have had which is in part all thanks to your help. With that, we thank you again for being a part of our journey here at LIFT4LIFE.

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