Good Practice from Slovenia

Zveza športnih društev Črnuče, in short ZŠDČ, is an association of sports societies which are active in Črnuče part of Ljubljana municipality, capital city of Slovenia. The association provides an umbrella organisation for the sports societies offering their programmes to more than 12,000 inhabitants of the area. It is active through the member clubs and as an organizer of the events.

ZŠDČ was founded in the year 2009 when the long-standing need of sports societies in the area to establish an organization which will represent them and provide synergetic effects for the members and the participants of their programmes and events took form.

The societies, member clubs of the association, are active in various sports and disciplines. Their selections are active on the regional and national level in competitive leagues. They also provide an excellent environment for children and youth to develop their sports and social skills and develop core values of friendship, cooperation, love for sports and movement in nature.

Sports and recreational activities that clubs, members of the association, specifically promote and develop are running, cross-country and trail running, football, volleyball, sailing, judo, karate, and mountaineering/hiking/alpinism. Participants in these programmes are of all ages, from the youngest in sports schools to the veterans actively training and participating at the European championships and senior citizens on their organized hikes and mountaineering trips.

Activities are being held at the facilities belonging to the municipality of Ljubljana, specifically the new multifunctional sports hall, and in nature. As with forests and fields for running events and the lakes for sailing programmes.

Societies organize regular events through their league competitions and on a yearly basis. These events include:

• Črnuče spring, a multisport/multiday event with international tournaments in judo, volleyball, football and sailing regatta,
• Cross-country running event each autumn,
• Annual judo academy,
• Annual event ‘The Best Athlete of Črnuče’ with acknowledgment of the best athletes and teams and their achievements in various sports and age groups.

Apart from the activities outlined above the ZŠDČ association also gives an opportunity for the individual experts to express their expertise in the fields of sports for all, sport of the youth, sports structures, connected with an ample knowledge of Informational Technology support, specifically aimed at sports.

The work of individual experts of the ZŠDČ brings added value to the genuine activities of this entity. Consequent global synergies with significant stakeholders involve for instance work of experts in the field of Sports and IT with following organizations:

• Sports for all board at the Olympic Committee of Slovenia,
• Rankings Committee at the European table Tennis Association,
• Executive committee of the IASI, International Association for Sports Information,
• SIOnet, Sports Information Officers Network of the Council of Europe member states,
• SIOUG, Slovenian Oracle Users Group,
• DSI, Slovenian IT Experts Association.

More precisely, Mr Ervin Lemark, a head of the running section of the ZDŠČ has participated as a member of these organisations at many meetings, seminars, conferences and congresses. He was an active participant at most of them as a speaker, presenter or seminar leader. For example, at the IASI congress in the year 2001 in Lausanne, Switzerland, when the congress was hosted by the International Olympic Committee.

In the last period, he has dedicated his professional career to development of systems for social transfers and support for the scholarships grants and management on a national level. While working with development teams he is pursuing the way of agile management and development encouraging the team members to further their skills through agile mindset and achieve personal growth and safety through values like transparency, trust, respect, efficiency, and team spirit. Very much alike the values we are all trying to bring to youth involved in sports and education.

From the IT point of view, in the recent years he has been searching for another synergy with the DLT, Distributed Ledger Technology a.k.a. blockchain. The idea being that DLT provides thrustless transparency of the content stored on such a platform, distributed and decentralized transactions, and non-biased governance by dPOS, distributed Proof Of Stake. In short, an ideal platform for distributed, community governed, censorship and deletion resistant content of any kind, including the field of sports and education.