Police and city authorities get proactive on opportunities for Split’s children.
On Saturday, the Split waterfront was the meeting place for city’s numerous cultural and artistic associations, sports clubs and schools, which presented their activities to children and offered them the opportunity to joined them. The event was organized as a part of the fifth Opportunities Fair, which is itself a part of the prevention initiative “Together We Can Do More”, organized by the Split Police Department in cooperation with the city authorities, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on October 25, 2015.
“The main objective is to introduce to children various extracurricular cultural, sports and other creative activities, in order to curb vandalism, bullying and other forms of risky behaviour. Children can learn about the possibilities how to spend some quality time. We have expected an even greater number of participants, but many sports clubs are today involved in various competitions elsewhere”, Mirko Matković, from the Prevention Office of the Split-Dalmatia Police Department, said at the event.
As part of the prevention program, for the last few days police officers have been going to elementary schools giving lectures for pupils in fourth, fifth and sixth grades. “Children know how much does a bottle of beer or a box of ‘Marlboro’ cigarettes cost, because their parents send them to local stores. They tell us that shopkeepers know they are not buying it for themselves but for their parents. We try to explain to them that such behaviour is punishable by law, and that the shopkeepers could be fined in the amount of several thousand kuna”, Matković said.
One of the stalls was presented by the members of the Women’s Football Club “Marjan” who invited girls to join them. The youngest among them, ten-year old Lucija Radman-Livaja, explained why she had chosen football, and not something that most of her peers would choose. “Dance is boring, and I am so good at playing football that I can beat even the boys from my class”, said Lucija who is, of course, a Hajduk fan.
Girls in football are no longer such a rarity, says the secretary and founder of “Marjan” Jozo Perić. Currently, they have around 40 girls, and invite everybody to join them.
