CS Bronx Powerlifting Club Bacău

CS Bronx Powerlifting Club Bacău (Bronx Sport Club) is a sports club founded in 2010, in Bacău City, Bacău County, North-East Region of Romania. Since then, the club annually prepares athletes who compete at national and international competitions in judo and powerlifting, being one of the most rewarded private clubs from Bacău. In 2010, the club brought an innovative practice in the social area by promoting sports as a fundamental tool for social integration and personal development for children and youths coming from vulnerable areas. Thus, more than 500 children from child protection care who practiced judo or powerlifting at CS Bronx Powerlifting Club Bacău started to love sports and, by regularly practicing it, their school level raised, their personal abilities developed and the motivation for gaining an independent future became bigger. In this way, the partnership between CS Bronx Powerlifting Club Bacău and the General Directorate for Social Assistance and Child Protection became a solid one, as the organization came up with a reliable and effective solution for reducing school absenteeism, dropout and juvenile delinquency among children and youths from child protection care. In 2014, the club succeeded in implementing the first judo program for blind children. The training sessions were organized for one year, with no participation in competitions. In 2019, the club opened an orphanage in Lilieci, Bacău, for 19 children and youth without families and low financial possibilities. All of them practice judo, being national and international champions. The first beneficiary of the program entered university in the last couple of years and is currently preparing to become a physical education teacher and judo coach. Also, four of the athletes have mental disabilities and judo helped them overcome all the social, physical, and mental barriers the disability threw on them. In 2021, Bronx Sport Club implemented “Colour in movement”, a project with 256 beneficiaries, children and youths coming from disadvantaged areas: rural areas, child protection system, disabilities, etc., with the aim of promoting recreational sports and outdoor games in the community. One of the biggest results of the projects was the first recreational sports center from Bacău with no entrance fee that offers, since then, all children and young people the possibility to learn how to ride a bike, skateboard, roller-skate, tennis, basketball, football, and swimming. Also, since 2021, the club started to organize 2 major international judo and powerlifting competitions in Bacău: “Judo Without Barriers” International Competition, which introduced the Slovenian competition software, Judo Manager, to the local judo scene, and “Bench Press Trophy”, the first Romanian powerlifting competition for young people with disabilities. Also, in 2022, the club started the first sports program dedicated to children and young people with mental disabilities from 52 mainstream schools in Bacău that promoted light sports and physical education among them. “Judo is playing, what are you saying?” allowed 729 intellectually disabled children to play together by means of judo and also brought an important international Special Needs judo tournament to the local scene. At the end of 2022, the club started ''Judoka, rei! - Where fears go away...'', a national campaign for promoting adaptive judo among children from disadvantaged backgrounds and convincing judo clubs to contribute to the fight against social exclusion and marginalization by means of judo tools. 250 children at risk (poverty, disabilities etc.) benefit from free judo training courses on a weekly basis during this project. In 2024, the club also started JUDO4ID, an Erasmus project meant to design and deliver tools for judo coaches and physical education teachers who work with intellectually disabled students, as well as judo-based activities to attract the mentally disabled children to judo trainings and sports activities, in order to help them develop at a physical, mental, emotional, and relational level. Therefore, CS Bronx Powerlifting Club Bacău has the experience, energy, and dedication to promote judo for creating social integration and diversity opportunities for vulnerable children, also for children with intellectual disabilities; thus, one of its strategic goals is to integrate judo in the process of social integration, self-development and autonomy for ID children.