To learn more about how the organisation is building the ecosystem of sports in India visit www.sports-society.org.

Upon returning to his homeland, Vishal decided to dedicate his weekends to meaningful volunteer work. He focused on assisting youth from underprivileged and vulnerable backgrounds where they were exposed to issues such as malnutrition, abuse, and exposure to crime at an early age. Education and life skills were not prioritised for this group, prompting him to offer his support.

Through various connections, he met a group of passionate people, all in their early 20s working in the IT sector in Bengaluru, Pune, and Delhi. Although they didn’t specifically know each other, they shared a common goal to build a roadmap that would give them a clear sense of purpose. Vishal and a team of 10 others established ‘Dream a Dream’ — a non-profit organisation dedicated to transforming the life experience of vulnerable children in Bengaluru.

They started with an after-school programme in Bengaluru to teach essential life skills to children — such as teamwork, problem-solving, and critical thinking — utilising sports and creative arts as mediums.

What started as a weekend initiative has now evolved into a full-fledged organisation that spearheads life skills education in Indian public schools. “When we founded Dream a Dream, we never expected to become a national organisation transforming education for millions of children,” says Vishal.

Their work has expanded to six states including Karnataka, Delhi, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Nagaland and Telangana — all in partnership with the respective State Governments.

How we turned our dreams into reality

At first, the group began their work with a community of children affected by HIV, investing considerable time to bring joy and happiness in their lives. By 2001, they had also started working in a care home catering to these children.

“At that point, Brinda (one of the founding members) was able to get two to three international volunteers, who organised a creative art therapy programme for the kids. It was a three-month weekend programme, and we saw a mind-blowing transformation among the kids. That was the first time we saw the impact of experiential learning in children,” says Vishal.

The art therapy programme encouraged them to widen their focus on empowering children from vulnerable backgrounds. Within two years, the organisation grew from 11 to 300 volunteers.

While working with care homes and orphanages, Vishal understood the complexities the kids faced. “Most of the care homes did great jobs to take care of the children’s basic needs and keep them off the streets but they didn’t necessarily prepare the children for life outside the home. A lot of the kids would end up returning to their care homes after a year or two of being outside post 18 years of age,” he adds.

During this period, the organisation integrated sports, arts, theatre, music, and various crafts into their weekly life skills education programme, using a unique life skills approach focused on the transformation of every child.

Pavithra KL, who is an alumnus of Dream a Dream, explains, “The programme is about helping children understand who they are, what are their strengths, what is their support system, and what are their dreams and aspirations.”

Dream a Dream programmes — such as Direct Impact, Systems Demonstration, and Building the Field — focus on implementing a life skills-oriented curriculum, pedagogy, new teaching methods, teacher training, and comprehensive assessments.

Under their ‘Direct Impact’ programme, the organisation employs a demonstrable model in both in-school and out-of-school learning spaces. It directly engages with 10,000 young individuals aged 8 to 23 each year, offering innovative education opportunities through sports and arts. This approach fosters crucial life skills like teamwork, decision-making, problem-solving, and critical thinking.

Additionally, the programme aids individuals aged 15 to 23 in preparing for an ecosystem that necessitates skills such as computer education, spoken English, communication skills, money management, and workplace readiness.

The ‘Systems Demonstration’ programme aims to transform public education systems in collaboration with the government. The organisation has effectively trained over 35,000 teachers and educators in the life skills approach. This training enables them to create safe learning environments within their current classrooms and expand their influence, concentrating on curriculum, teaching methods, and evaluations.

In addition, in partnership with state governments, the organisation is introducing new curriculums such as the Happiness Curriculum in Delhi, Anandam Pattacharya in Uttarakhand, a whole-child development pedagogical approach in Jharkhand and a Life Skills Curriculum in Nagaland and Telangana. The organisation also support the state education departments with new pedagogical approaches, teacher training and introducing new assessment frameworks. 

The ‘Building the Field’ strategic approach is working to enable a mindset shift among diverse stakeholders in the learning ecosystem to bring in a collaborative approach to education, encompassing the broader community, decision makers, professionals in various fields, parents, teachers and other stakeholders.

The organisation intends to maximise impact through large-scale dissemination of real world research findings, engage in critical dialogues to listen to diverse narratives of success, amplify young people’s voices through collaborations and advocate for thriving as the purpose of education by weaving together people, places and voices supported by high impact research.

Spearheading change through sports

Dream a Dream works with both affordable private schools and State Governments. For instance, they partnered with the Delhi government and other nonprofit organisations to implement the world’s largest in-school Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum — the Happiness Curriculum — launched in 2018 by the Delhi Government to enhance students’ mindfulness and positive productivity. This initiative positively impacts eight lakh children in the national capital.

Pavithra, currently the associate director at the Innovation Lab, which creates skill development modules for young people, states that Dream a Dream offers children numerous opportunities to participate in various games like hockey, rugby, and table tennis. Recently, they have exclusively emphasised football.

“Football allowed us to include as many people as possible given its popularity. We could get many young people to play as it didn’t need a lot of equipment,” she says, adding that the football programme at Dream a Dream includes a weekly two-hour session.

Pavithra further explains that children typically join the programme at the age of eight, mostly in Class 4, and can select between the creative arts and football programmes, each lasting for seven years.

So far, the initiative has impacted over 2.2 million children across the country, she informs. Among them is yet another alumnus Ranjith H, who, at the age of 12, used to play kabaddi in school.

In 2008, driven by curiosity about rugby, the jersey, shoes, and weekly snacks offered to participants, he enrolled in the rugby programme. “At the time, my father would load or unload goods in the market whereas my mother worked in the garment industry. Because of financial constraints, we did not get good quality food at home. I mostly depended on the snacks provided by Dream a Dream,” he shares.

To support himself financially, he took on part-time jobs, including assisting in garment work and distributing newspapers. Despite the challenges he encountered at home, within a few years, Ranjith was competing at the national level for Karnataka. Travelling to rugby tournaments and meeting people from other parts of the country gave him the confidence to come out of his shell.

“That was the time I learned how to talk to people. I was not scared of playing rugby but I was scared of talking to people before!” he says.

Later on, Ranjith completed his Class 10 and went to college. “I realised how much sports can benefit a person. My sports certificate helped me to get into college through the sports quota. I worked part-time and completed my college,” he says. After college, Ranjith joined Dream a Dream as a football facilitator.

The fundamental goal of the organisation is to ensure that no child they work with is left behind. “Can we ensure that each and every young person feels a sense of support and is moving forward? Even if they have failed academically, are they thriving? Can they still look forward to a life with dignity?” asks Pavithra.

“As we are learning more about young people, we are working to re-imagine the purpose of education in the 21st century towards the idea of Thriving,” she remarks.

Vidya (left centre) with the other coaches in Chandrapur.

Her job with Magic Bus inspired her to venture even further outside her comfort zone. She acquired the skills to effectively communicate with school principals about the value she gained from the sports-for-development and life skills education programmes of Magic Bus, and to persuade parents to enroll their daughters. 

“Permission from parents is very difficult at times,” she explains. “They feel [it is] unsafe. It was very difficult for me to win their trust, but I did it.”

Vidya was one of six female kabaddi coaches from similar backgrounds and ages (between 23 and 25) who joined Magic Bus around the same time. The other coaches were Komal Pachare, Nilam Verma, Shital Borkar, Poornima Chandekar and Reema Khushwah, who shared a common goal — to empower girls through sports, just as they were.

The coaching sessions continue in Chandrapur

All of them are part of Magic Bus’ School Completion and Livelihood Enablement Programme in Chandrapur. The purpose of the programme is to train teachers to deliver life skills education to adolescents from Class 6 to Class 10 in collaboration with the government. Operating in Chandrapur proved to be a success, leading to Magic Bus initiating a partnership with the government to further expand their impact.

Magic Bus, founded by Matthew Spacie back in 1999, has impacted the lives of more than one million adolescents over the past two-plus decades. At present 3,94,206 adolescents are enrolled in their programmes across 2,770 schools. 

Reflecting on the initial days, he says, “About 30 years ago, when I arrived in Mumbai, I couldn’t ignore the stark contrast in living conditions within the city. On one side, there was a sizable middle-class population, living fairly ordinary lives. On the other side, there was a parallel reality of people living in poor conditions. 

As an outsider, this divide deeply affected me, compelling me to respond in some way. However, there was a personal connection that played a significant role in shaping my vision for Magic Bus. 

Sports for development

Magic Bus India Foundation is a pioneer in the life skills education and skilling sector in India. Their mission, as Matthew states, has always been to help young people. “When we started Magic Bus, our aim was to help young people thrive and find happiness and success. We took them on mountain trips and engaged in various activities to boost their resilience and happiness. Our community-based mentors played a crucial role, serving as role models who had conquered similar challenges. For me, the importance of mentors became evident early on. Within five years, our approach transformed from me playing rugby with young men at the Gymkhana to engaging 10,000 adolescents and young people across Mumbai in a life-changing programme led by mentors from their own communities.”

Now, the organisation implements a sports and activity-based life-skills programme with the goal to equip adolescents with essential life skills and facilitate a smoother transition from school to the workforce. It operates in 24 states across 72 districts in India. 

Magic Bus has played a pioneering role in introducing sports-for-development and life skills education in India and Southeast Asia. “Currently, we empower individuals to acquire essential life skills through sports. By gathering on the playground, we especially empower girls to assert their presence in a domain traditionally reserved for boys. We aim to challenge gender stereotypes, encouraging girls to break barriers while fostering equal participation from boys,” says Jayant Rastogi, Global CEO, Magic Bus India Foundation.

Jayant Rastogi, the Global CEO of the Magic Bus India Foundation

The organisation shows that adolescents in its programmes improved their school regularity by 21.8%, a 31% increase in perceived self-efficacy, and a 34.7% boost in resilience.

In Baddi, Himachal Pradesh, a place where Magic Bus has actively engaged since 2015, a significant milestone was reached in March 2021. The organisation introduced a sports programme exclusively tailored for girls. Divided into two distinct phases from December 2021 to March 2023, this programme carries a primary objective of empowering girls aged 11 to 18 through the influence of sports.

According to Vivek Sharma, the programme manager, 10,000 girls were given sports sessions each in kabaddi or cricket. The girls also took part in tournaments within their schools. Some of them were then chosen to compete in district, state, and national tournaments.

The objectives of the programme also include the holistic development of the participants, which includes communication, socio-emotional learning, and education.

Vivek says they were able to succeed in Baddi because Magic Bus had earned the community’s trust first. “We had been planning since 2015. We worked with the girls, the boys and their parents and sensitised them [to the idea of a girls’ sports programme].” 

The programme has also actively addressed common concerns raised by parents regarding the safety and expenses of the girls participating in tournaments held in larger cities. Recognising these concerns, the programme takes responsibility for the girls’ expenses and ensures their safety by arranging for accompanying coaches during their travel. In certain cases, the programme even covers medical expenses and provides first aid kits.

Vivek emphasises, “In this way, we address any doubts community members may have about the program, ensuring that their questions are answered satisfactorily.”

Matthew adds, “Initially, when I played rugby with young people, I believed that helping them secure jobs would lead to economic stability. However, we realised they weren’t ready for a structured work environment. This setback inspired our “Childhood to Livelihood” programme. We understood that getting them jobs was only half the battle; keeping them employed required equipping them with the right skills and guidance to enter the workforce. It’s where they grasp the value of work, learn skills beyond their chosen profession, and evolve into role models, actively breaking the cycle of poverty for their families and the entire community.”

‘Showed me the right path’ 

Vivek points to the example of Prachi, a young girl who had previously never left her village. Last year she travelled to a national athletic competition in Ranchi, Bihar. “Her parents were in complete shock that a girl who never left the home before has performed in this kind of event,” he says. “They said, ‘If you had not tried with our child, she would never have reached this level.’”

Bittu Kumari with some of her awards

Another girl who has benefitted from Magic Bus’ interventions is 17-year-old Bittu Kumari. She joined the programme in 2017 as a Class 8 student and says she learned life skills through volleyball and kabaddi (volleyball has since been replaced with cricket). According to her, Magic Bus helped her make the optimum use of her talent as a kabaddi player. “Now I am a state-level kabaddi player, and I want to play at the national level also,” she says. “If I had not found Magic Bus, I would not have made it this far. They showed me the right path.”

In the process, she has gone from being scared to speak to people to having the confidence to speak to anyone. “Magic Bus taught me communication skills, gave me confidence, taught me what is right and what is wrong,” she says. 

Last year Magic Bus appointed Bittu as one of their community coordinators. While her ambition is to become an IPS officer, she also plans to play kabaddi for as long as she can. “My parents give me full support. They say, ‘When my daughter is on the right track, why would I stop her?’”

For Matthew, these stories motivate him further. “The emotional aspect of our work reminds me of our mission’s importance and the need to stay rooted in the communities we serve. By understanding their struggles and empathising with their challenges, we ensure our programmes remain relevant and effective. This powerful motivation drives our commitment to doing right by them and striving for continuous improvement.”

When the organisation first looked to introduce sports, they faced a challenge of not having anyone on the staff who could lead a sports-focused initiative. Fortunately, they found the right candidate in Lisa Murawsky, who has been an international sports consultant, educator and coach for over 20 years. 

Rohini (now the Head of Global Partnerships and Strategy) and Lisa together created the ‘Sports for Life’ programme for the foundation, which led to the birth of the these games.

‘Toofaan Games’ and the opportunities it brings to girls

Naandi Foundation, based out of Hyderabad, is an organisation working diligently since its conception in 1998 towards the eradication of poverty and upliftment of girls and women across India.

The four events of the Toofaan Games that the girls participate in are the 50m sprint, shuttle run, standing long jump, and endurance run. These four events were selected because they are simple, easy to conduct and give the girls an opportunity to demonstrate their speed, agility, lower body strength and stamina.

About 130 girls make it to the final stage of the Toofaan Games each year and for many of them, the games are the first time they set foot outside their villages.

A significant point to emphasise here is that the initiative is led by women entirely, right from coaching to the results. The existing infrastructure at Naandi — under the Nanhi Kali programme — has propelled the movement in a short span of time. 

The ‘Nanhi Kali after-school tuition centres’ are managed by a young woman from the same community as the girls. When sports were introduced, these tutors were to deliver the weekly sports drills and practices. 

“In the first year it was optional for tutors to become ‘sports allies’. About half of them said that they wouldn’t do it because they didn’t know what it was. By the second year, everyone wanted to do it,” Rohini says. 

The tutors initially went in not knowing what to expect, but once they experienced it, everyone wanted to be a part of it.

The first event, back in 2020, vindicated their belief about the benefits of sports and physical activity, and it was a result of the organisation inculcating sports into their work and regular programming.

Initially, videos and photos of the girls doing these sports drills were sent back and forth over WhatsApp to the sports allies. To streamline this process further, Naandi decided to create its own app called SportStar to create a database.

Now, once a week, a video of a sports drill is sent out to roughly 6,000 sports allies. This allows for feedback and collaboration among all of them as everyone shares their training videos, which ensures that the app has more content for their perusal.

“Our girls cannot relate to YouTube videos of foreigners doing these drills. With this exchange of videos, we have ended up creating more resources for our girls to imbibe information from. The app is not open to the public,” says Rohini.

“If a girl is doing some exercise well, then we use that video during our drills across the country,” she adds. This is what the organisation terms ‘Sports for Life’.

What do girls do in ‘Sports For Life’?

Over the last four years, ‘Sports for Life’ has lived up to both its name and objective to make sports a part of everyday life for girls starting from the age of six.

Under this initiative, one weekly sports class is delivered on SportStar. And, from August each year to the following January, there is a Toofaan Games sweep that goes across the country — about 6000 villages in 9 states — as widely spread as Darjeeling in the north-east to Bharuch in the west. A subset of the girls also participate in regular football coaching.

Every young girl now enjoys one sports class per week where they not only play but also learn about body movement, nutrition and menstrual health management. It is a fun programme which lets all the girls willingly participate in it.

Inculcating sportsmanship and inclusivity while playing is another important principle that these girls are taught. “Every girl learns to include everyone else, it doesn’t matter if they are good or bad at the sport,” Rohini says.

While the academics programme is given in nine languages, the SportStar app uses photos and minimal English text. Limiting it to English was a deliberate decision and has had the additional benefit of helping the sports allies pick up and improve their English, which appears to have worked.

How was it received at the grassroots level

Vishakha Bhale Vyas is one of the 475 sports allies who work in the Bharuch district of Gujarat. This district has around 12,500 girls aged between eight and 14 years. 

Responsible for mobilising and supporting the field teams in the district, she also pays attention to the tournaments announced by the local and district-level sports associations so that the girls there can participate in those events. 

According to her, there is such a passion for sports that in the district they have branched out into football as well from other track and field sports and now have about 20 teams of girls.

“No one thought that in this Jambusar block, which is very backward, there would be so many girls’ football teams,” she says. “In fact, our girls’ teams have been the only ones to participate in all the inter-district tournaments. Most other schools, even the private ones, don’t even have a football team for girls.

The success of the football teams in turn led to the announcement of a training programme for coaches. “Now we have women football coaches who have D-Level Certification in Coaching from the All-India Football Federation (AIFF),” Vyas adds.

She has also benefited personally. “As a student, I played kabaddi and kho kho – I was in my college team. But I never thought that sports would enter my life again and that it would enrich my work with the community. It has helped me improve my health. I also find it to be refreshing, it breaks any monotony that may come into my routine.

Poornima Singh, who manages the programme in the Prayagraj district in Uttar Pradesh, works with 7,856 girls, along with 271 sports allies. She discovered that the girls did not need any motivation to play sports. “They are ready 24×7 to go to the playground and play,” she says.

According to her, the biggest challenge has been persuading parents to let their daughters travel out of their district to participate in the Toofaan Games. “In many cases, no one in their family has ever traveled outside the district, never sat in a train, never stayed in a hotel. For them to imagine their little child doing all these things is very difficult,” she says.

The sports allies have also had to get creative to conduct events for the Toofaan Games. While villages have a lot of open space, they are either used for cultivation or are uneven and covered with plants and boulders. 

So, they sometimes enlist the villagers to help clear a space for the events, or they lay down tracks which have only two lanes. “There are so many ways in which they find the solutions,” Singh says.

Personally, Singh has enjoyed coaching sports so much she got her E Level Coaching Certificate from AIFF (All India Football Federation) earlier this year. “All day I work hard in the office, but in my mind, there is this excitement that I must finish all my work by 5:30 pm so that I can go to the ground and play,” she says. “Another personal benefit for me from sports is that I sleep very well.”

Difficulty finding suitable spaces to play in is something Ruchi Upadhyay, another sports ally, also experiences in Varanasi district, Uttar Pradesh. “We would love to have good spaces,” she says. “By ‘good space’ I mean level playing ground, no bumps, no pebbles, or stones or small bushes. And an ideal good space would be where we also have washrooms and drinking water.”

Despite the lack of these spaces, the Varanasi programme has 12,603 girls and 499 sports allies. Upadhyay said she feels happiest when girls from her area qualify for the finals of the Toofaan Games.

Another good thing to come out of this activity was that over the last few years, several sports allies have received certification from official sporting bodies in India to become administrators and coaches, even independent of the Toofan Games.

Ask the students if they enjoy the event and pat come the replies from them all.

“I like all the Toofaan Games events,” one participant says. “But I like football more. I want to play more and I also want to be good in my studies.”

“My favourite is sprint and shuttle run,” says another participant. “I have learnt that I should keep sipping water and now I go for a run every morning.”

The overall objective of the programme will always remain ‘sports for all’, rather than promoting excellence in sports. “There is bound to be talent that we spot,” Mukherjee said. “And having spotted it, we will do what is required. But that is not our main objective. We want girls and women to play sports until their last living day.”

Anusha comes from a remote village called Bandlapalli in Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh. Her parents are farmers who have a small plot of land, and her father also works as a tractor driver for hire. Playing sports seriously was not considered an option for her. But the then 13-year-old left-arm spinner was named the best player of the tournament and received a scholarship from ASA to attend their residential academy.  

Anusha, now 20, has since played for the Andhra Pradesh Under-16, Under-19, and Women’s Senior State teams. 

“Playing sports at ASA has helped [me] in many ways,” she says. “It made me more confident than I ever was. It gave me exposure and financial help through playing for the senior State team, which I needed …Alongside, playing sports at ASA has given me the opportunity to train in one of the best cricket facilities in the state as I was able to improve cricketing skills.”

Anusha is currently in her third year of under-graduation at PVKK Degree College, where she is pursuing a B Com in computers. But her dream is “to continue to play cricket at a higher level and [one day] represent the Indian women’s team.” 

A major emphasis on the grassroots 

ASA is part of the Rural Development Trust (RDT), which has been working in communities in Andhra Pradesh for over 50 years. In the late 70s and 80s, the Trust taught kabaddi to encourage children to be active, but this was done in an informal way. Sport became a formal, and integral, part of its programmes only in the late 90s. That’s when the ASA was born. Over time, the ASA programmes have expanded to include eight sports — cricket, football, hockey, judo, tennis, kabaddi, softball and, most recently, archery. 

“In the beginning, our programme used to provide financial and material support to teams travelling out to participate in tournaments,” Moncho Ferrer, programme director of RDT, says. “Later on, we started organising events such as grassroots level tournaments and camps to ensure children access their fundamental right to play in a safe and quality playing space, which later grew to a year-long programme with an emphasis on holistic development of children at all levels of the programme.”

The organisation’s programmes follow a traditional pyramid structure. At the bottom is their grassroots programme, which is conducted entirely in government schools in each community. Then there are the development centres, and at the top sits the residential programme, which is based at the ASA sports village that was built between 2000 and 2002. 

“The major emphasis lies on the grassroots,” Sai Krishna Pulluru, executive director of ASA, says. “All the sports have a grassroots programme except tennis. We also have around 104 or 105 [development] centres, which include youth clubs, government schools, and sports centres.”

According to Pulluru, the difference between the grassroots and development centres is that the latter have their own physical infrastructure, such as computer labs and classrooms, and they provide English classes as well as nutrition. The residential programme at Anantapur Sports Village is for children who have the potential to excel at sport. 

ASA also runs leagues from August to December for each of their sports where matches are held every Sunday. The rural cricket tournament is the longest-running league, and arguably the organisation’s crown jewel. According to Pulluru, over 100 villages used to participate in the tournament, with the final being held in Anantapur at a pristine cricket ground. However, it was recently restructured and now features 16 teams each in U-12 mixed-gender, U-16 and U-19 age categories. It has also been renamed the Ananta Premier League (APL).

ASA also runs an athletics meet exclusively for girls. 

“In these leagues, we scout talent and provide full scholarship — academics, boarding and lodging, and access to competition — to whoever can pursue this,” says Pulluru. 

‘Joy and happiness’

The programmes have been tailored for children ranging between the ages of 6 and 18. Over time, life skills were added to the programmes, for instance, a coach may conduct a session on topics such as communication, inequality, or gender awareness. 

Pulluru estimates that 6,700 children were part of the programme at the beginning of the season, and roughly 1.5 lakh have gone through the programme over the years. 

“It is a dream for me to be part of this kind of programme,” he notes. “When I finish my work, step out of my office, and watch the children playing, I can see the real joy on their faces. That is what gives me a sense of joy and happiness. That is one thing that really drives me.”

In 2016-17, ASA started a mixed-gender festival where girls and boys compete together, though this is reserved only for younger children. The age depends on the sport — for cricket it is U-12, for football under-9, and for softball U-14. Participants are brought to a single location once in two months and the festival is held over two days, with the final round being played at the Anantapur Sports Village. 

Y Lahari, a 12-year-old from Dharmavaram, was first introduced to ASA when he played in the mixed-gender U-9 football cup a few years ago. In 2021, at the age of 11, he was given a scholarship to attend the academy. 

“I like playing [football] because I can make a lot of new friends and also visit other places,” Lahari says. “I can maintain fitness by playing sports regularly.” He credits ASA with teaching him new skills such as teamwork and communication, as well as values such as respect and fair play. 

“I am interested in refereeing,” he adds. “I want to become a professional FIFA referee where I can referee national and international matches.”

ASA relies mainly on volunteer coaches and physical education teachers – “They are the backbone of the programme,” Pulluru says. The programme has also created a pathway for participants to become coaches. “Not everyone can make it to the next level. To build a sports culture, you need more coaches.” 

ASA encourages those who are interested to join the one-year Youth Leadership Programme and become volunteer or shadow coaches. As part of the programme, they are given the chance to organise events and conduct workshops. ASA then supports those who complete the programme and wish to become professional coaches by helping them get their coaching licences from the various state associations.

In particular, ASA wants to increase the number of female coaches in rural areas. “Though there is still a long way to go, it’s worth noting the changing perceptions among the wider community (particularly parents, teachers) about boys and girls equally playing sports,” Ferrer says. “The programme has enabled youth to gain skills to enhance their higher education and livelihood opportunities, particularly as a coach and/or a referee.” 

‘Sports made me who I am today’ 

One of those coaches is P Hindu Kumar (24). He was selected for the residential programme as a 14-year-old in 2014 and is now a coach with the organisation. He comes from a village called D Honnur, and says his parents were “very happy” when he was selected, because it meant he would get a good education and could also keep playing sports. 

“Sport made me who I am today,” Kumar said. “It gave me a career opportunity as a coach, [and] I learned a lot through playing sport; most importantly believing in myself and in my team, and helping each other to achieve a goal, which are the most important aspects in any part of life or profession.”

The programme also taught him to develop empathy, he says. “[The] programme supported me when I was in need, as I come from a family where my parents are farmers and daily wage workers,” Kumar says. “Today I can display the same qualities as a person and professional working with children who have the same background as mine.”  

To measure the outcomes of its programmes, ASA uses different parameters for each level of their pyramid – Grassroots, League and Empower. At the grassroots level, they use the number of the children they have in the programme plus the number of clubs they have set up. In the case of the leagues, which are open to all the clubs, they measure the number of children who participate from each club in the league. At the empower level, they track the number of youth leaders and volunteers in the programme, as well as the number of internships and employment opportunities that they can facilitate.

ASA also uses a socio-emotional development index to track qualities such as self-esteem and self-confidence among the children, as well as social skills such as communication and relationship building. The organisation has also developed a gender equality index that at the programme level factors in the number of female coaches, the ratio of girls to boys in each centre, and the overall ratio of girls to boys across all their programmes. ASA also has a section on gender in its questionnaire for children between the ages of 10 to 15 that aims to measure their perception of gender equality. Students must rate how much they agree or disagree with statements, such as “I believe members of the opposite gender can equally participate in sport” and “I believe everyone is equal”. 

As far as funding goes, ASA benefits from being part of the Rural Development Trust, which has its own sources of revenue. On top of that, the academy has project partners such as the La Liga Foundation and the Rafael Nadal Foundation. However, according to Pulluru, funding from corporates remains challenging because of a lack of information on how they can use CSR funds in tribal and rural areas.

“In the early years of ASA, many had questioned what an NGO had to do with sports, but now we see numerous sports for development programs doing great work across India,” Ferrer says. “So, we feel humbled to see the trust we placed in a new programme back in the early 2000s has managed to evolve and grow to become this big in reaching approximately 8,000 children every year in eight different sports. Over the years, we have had numerous individual achievements, but of late, to share, I see B Anusha, recently being shortlisted for the Women’s Premier League (WPL) auction as an accomplishment for her and our programme.”

When Saumil Majmudar and Parminder Gill set up Sportz Village in 2003, it was to highlight why ‘play’ is important in a child’s overall development. 

Gill notes, “Some of us felt strongly that play was being missed out. When we went to schools, and then when our kids went, many things had changed. But there was no change in how schools or parents looked at play or physical activity — rather, we saw it diminishing from children’s lives for many reasons [including a sedentary lifestyle, the use of gadgets as opposed to active playtime, etc.]” 

And so, Sportz Village was set up to get children involved in play and sport as part of their core education. For roughly its first decade, the Bengaluru-based organisation worked with private schools that were able to pay for their sports and physical education programmes. Now, Sportz Village operates in 22 states — including Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Haryana, and West Bengal — and does significant work in rural areas as well.

Why play? 

Soumil explains that over the last 20 years, he had tried multiple models of getting children to play in sustainable and scalable ways before arriving on the school partnership model. 

“Providing adults — who control the child’s quality and quantity of place experience — with the right data and visibility around the process, as well as on the impact on goals that they care about (attendance, grades, fitness, sports, and so on) can help get 100 million children to play,” he opines. 

This, he notes, is possible through a structured programme that integrates with the school PE timetable, is designed for limited space and time, and provides resources, data, and visibility to the various stakeholders involved. Most of all, it gets “100% of the children to develop the right fitness, skills, and attitudes to play for life”. 

In 2017, the organisation launched Sportz Village Foundation to help raise Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds and expand its outreach in government schools. 

“The CSR law requires a corporate to invest only with a non-profit,” Gill says. “The new structure was important so that we don’t have constraints in raising funds for running programmes in government schools. The Foundation also allows us to achieve different goals, even though the structure of our programme and the quality of experience for children is uniform in private and public schools. In government schools that cater to children from underserved communities, there are different things ailing the system…the biggest piece is the socio-emotional skills.”

Some examples of socio-emotional skills are the ability to understand your thoughts and feelings and the ability to relate to others. These skills are widely recognised as vital to personal development and building healthy relationships.

50,000 lives transformed 

Gill says that keeping children, especially girls, in school was another one of their priorities, as the drop-out rate in government schools is quite high. 

The programme, which is called ‘Sport for Change’, functions at three levels. At the base is sports education, which involves teaching children basic physical and sports skills. “The core [of the programme] was to integrate children in play and sport because it was central to their experience and development process, regardless of whether they want to be athletes or not,” Gill said. 

According to Upma Kanswa Jain, who manages marketing and communication for the Foundation, over 50,000 students are currently engaged in their programmes. They also wanted to create a pathway for those who performed well in a sport and wished to pursue it further. So, the next level is their sports excellence programme PathwayZ, where interested or selected children are given expert training in their sports development centres (SDC). 

These centres are located within the schools in which they work. At the highest level, they take the best-performing student-athletes from the SDCs and admit them into the high-performance learning centres (HPLC), where they are also provided with match and tournament opportunities, and given scouting information about district, state, and national selection trials.

Of the 50,000 students in their programmes, over 2,200 are enrolled in sports development centres, with roughly 60% being boys and the rest girls. 

Finally, there are about 40 students in their high-performance learning centre, of which roughly half are boys and half are girls. “They get invited to trials that are happening at the district level,” Jain said. “If they perform, then state level, then national level events.”

Shaping athletes 

Different geographical areas offer different sports depending on the infrastructure available in the schools. For example, in Lucknow and Noida, children can choose between volleyball, cricket, football, kabaddi and athletics. The sports development centres operate six days a week and host sessions lasting two hours a day. Depending on the school, the sessions are held either in the morning or in the evening. The children are given t-shirts, shorts, shoes and additional nutrition in the form of bananas, eggs and milk. 

In situations where a child’s parents are reluctant to let them attend the sports programmes, the Foundation’s programme managers reach out to the parents to tell them how good their child is at sports, and that everything is paid for, so they don’t need to worry about any additional expenses. 

According to Ranvijay Gupta, one of the programme managers in Uttar Pradesh, the Foundation has faced the odd protest as well. “[The parents] tell us, ‘You people are spoiling our kids by making them go outside and play. This is not our culture. We cannot let them go outside and play’.”

At the same time, he makes it clear that it is possible to change the minds of even these parents. “It takes time,” he says. “I take the help of the other parents whose children are in the programme. I tell them to come and support us. We have a second meeting, and a third meeting. After that, we can mostly convince them, and they send their wards to us.” 

Based on his experience, around 70% of the responses they get from parents are positive.

Gupta (38) is in charge of the programmes in Lucknow & Noida-based schools supported by the HCL Foundation. He joined Sportz Village in 2010 and moved to the Foundation in 2017. According to him, they had just 5 to 10 girls in their SDCs when they started the programme, but now they work with over 600 girls on a regular basis. 

“We have helped more than 450 children play in district-level tournaments, more than 100 at the state level, and over 30 at the national level to date,” he said. “This is very satisfying for me.” 

Building role models 

One of those girls is Rukhsar, a Class 11 student at Govt. Girls Inter College Vikash Nagar in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. She is an avid kabaddi player and wants to represent India one day. However, previously, her circumstances held her back. Her father earns Rs 7,000 a month working in the private sector and did not support her desire to be a kabaddi player, though her mother and three siblings did. 

The Sports for Change programme cleared the way for her to play by giving her the opportunity to train with expert coaches and sports nutritionists, while also learning life skills such as leadership.

As a result, in just the last six months, Rukhsar has been selected for the Uttar Pradesh senior women’s state and junior girl’s state kabaddi teams. She is also a promising athlete in the triple jump, where she finished first at the district level. 

“My parents feel much better now because I am travelling to different places, meeting new people and my game is getting better,” Rukhsar says.

The Foundation hires specialised coaches to run its sports excellence programmes. The coaches must have played at the state level in their sport and hold a minimum qualification of a Bachelor’s in Education. However, as the organisation has grown, hiring good coaches has become a constraint because funds have not kept pace. 

They are also training children from their programme as coaches. Since the Foundation is relatively new, the first batch of potential coaches from within is only now on the horizon. “Very soon, we will hire two or three girls from our programme,” Gupta says. The advantage of having homegrown coaches is that they are already familiar with the programme, and being from the same community as the children, can sustain the programme and serve as role models too. 

Beyond the field of sport 

Sportz Village Foundation has conducted a number of studies to determine the impact of its programmes on education, health and empowerment. One of them concluded that in the roughly 390 schools supported by Ashok Leyland, the children were more likely to attend school and showed a 10% increase in fitness levels, 18 months after the programme was launched. 

Another study with the Sports Authority of Gujarat demonstrated a 23% increase in female participation in after-school programmes, two years after the launch of the programme. 

They also conduct an annual health survey, of which the most recent results claim that 95% of children improved their fitness levels, 92% improved their communication abilities and 78% developed greater emotional capabilities in the face of challenges. 

The Foundation has set ambitious goals for 2023. It wants to add 100,000 children to its programmes and enable over 1,000 student-athletes to perform at an elite level. Improving gender perception and inclusivity is another priority. 

“There are still some barriers in our society around gender,” Gupta says. “I feel that at the policy level, inclusivity should equally be a focus so that more talented girls can come forward without any hesitation, participate in sports and eventually win medals for India.”

“Nurturing athletes, especially girls, can serve as a way to create role models for children and youth of India, within and beyond the field of sport,” Gill says. 

Edited by Divya Sethu

This was part of her involvement with Naz Foundation’s programme to use sport for development, she says. But the advent of COVID-19, which forced Naz to scale back on the YPI programme, put a spanner in the works. 

For Kalyani, it was imperative that the programme continue. “We’d experienced how sports has shaped our personalities,” she recalls about her time playing basketball in school. “When you come together as a team, strategise, win — or even when you don’t win — sports offers the ability to come together and be strong.”

At the time, Kalyani was also closely working with Corina van Dam, a sports instructor from the Netherlands. The duo decided that YPI, which till then had grown to encompass 1,15,000 girls, had to carry on its good work.  

While searching for a solution on the way forward, Kalyani eventually met the founders of Maitrayana, an existing not-for-profit company that at the time did not have programmes or staff of its own. The founders of Maitrayana agreed to house the YPI programme, and so began their journey. 

‘Play is an effective way to learn through experience’

Kalyani has had 27 years of experience with working on gender and sexuality, and has always been an avid sports fan, she says. For her work in Maitrayana, she drew on her own experiences with how sports transformed her life. 

“Not all girls get a chance to experience play because of the lack of facilities in their schools and access to public spaces because of gender discrimination. Parents think it is not safe for girls, [and they face resistance] from the community, boys occupy the grounds….giving girls a chance to play is a way to challenge gender norms.” 

Meanwhile, van Dam started playing football in the Netherlands in the ‘80s, at a time when girls didn’t play football. “Football has long been a male dominated sport in the Netherlands,” she says. “We were called weak, told we were ‘ugly’ to watch, that we looked like men, and that we’re all lesbians. Things have only changed most recently when the Dutch women’s team performed well at the world stage and the men’s team has not been able to play as expected in any European or World Championship.” 

Playing football led her to discover the use of sport as a tool to help others, first in terms of mental health, and then to bring about societal change. “Can society look differently at girls who play and be leaders in sports, be visible in public spaces, run around, make noise, give their opinion?” she asks. 

For the programme, the duo zeroed in on netball, a sport that has a long history in India and is predominantly played by women. 

Creating a safe space

The Young People’s Initiative has been built around three pillars — empowering girls and young women; influencing families and communities; and ecosystem building with other stakeholders. 

The programme works with girls starting from the age of 10. “The unique thing for us is that we work with girls at an age when they [typically] don’t play sports,” Kalyani says. “At age 10 and above most girls experience body changes and drop out of sports.”

The girls go through a structured 10-month programme, during which they learn how to play netball. One big advantage is that it is a sport where the girls can wear anything and play, removing the potential parental objection to a uniform. It can also be played on any surface, whether it’s grass or sand. 

The sport is delivered in a way that the girls learn life skills alongside it. These off-field topics include decision-making, body image, menstruation, communication, women’s rights, and gender-based violence. Coaches hold two sessions a week in local communities as well as in government and municipal schools. Each session lasts 45 minutes to an hour. 

To enable the girls to continue playing netball after they complete the programme, YPI facilitated the creation of netball clubs within the communities. “Our question was, why do boys form sports clubs, but girls don’t?” van Dam notes. “How do we facilitate these conversations and support our young leaders to take on these pathways?”

The girls handle the management of the club — from the format to elections — while Maitrayana supports them with the training of referees, coaches and coaches. The clubs give the girls a safe space to keep practising their life skills and having conversations with each other about their rights and the issues they face. 

Thousands of lives transformed 

Fifteen-year-old Soni Sahu is currently a club leader at a netball club called Kamgar Club in Mumbai. Sahu, who is a Class 10 student at VVK Sharma High School, lives in Prabhadevi, Mumbai, where her mother is a homemaker and her father is a cook. She went through the basic 10-month programme during the COVID-19 pandemic and helped form the club after she graduated.

“Before enrolling in the programme, I was only doing housework at home,” Sahu says. “I had no idea about the sports ground where we currently play netball. It was not a place where I could go…What I like about the programme is that I began owning a space in the community to play and I made friends in my area.”

Sahu’s confidence has grown so much that she said she was able to confront a man who was stalking her. “For the first time, I was not afraid, looked angry at him and asked, ‘What do you want?’ He did not expect that and vanished.”

Maitrayana currently runs the YPI programme in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, with roughly 10,000 girls participating per year . Kalyani estimates that since the programme started back in 2006, about 1,40,000 girls have gone through it.

“The biggest appreciation [we get] is from the communities where the girls live,” Kalyani said. “We have been able to demonstrate what it means for girls to take on leadership positions — they manage money better, they have more discipline, and there is an increase in self-esteem. Parents see the girls are more responsible. That’s the game changer.”

In fact, notes Kalyani, there has been a sea change in attitude over the last decade. When YPI first launched, she would have meetings with the parents to try and convince them to let their daughters join. She even saw the parents as barriers themselves. Over time they worked to address the concerns the parents had, and today, they have parents asking them to enrol their daughters. 

“Parents come and the mothers even play, and they love it,” Kalyani said. 

Agents of change 

One important factor is that participants in the programme tend to stick around. Van Dam says 50% of her colleagues went through the programme. “They serve as role models both for the [new] girls and the parents.”  

One of those role models is Sheetal Shetty, who is the learning and innovation associate at Maitrayana. The 24-year-old, who grew up in Worli, Mumbai, joined the YPI programme in 2010 as part of their second-ever batch in the city. 

She notes that she was shy and introverted, and at first mostly stayed at home. When the coaches would arrive after school, she would make some excuse or the other to leave. It was only when she saw her friends being given snacks while participating that she changed her mind.

After going through the 10-month programme, she joined the school netball league. Then, when she finished Class 10, her mother pushed her to apply to be an intern in the 18-month Community Sports Coach programme. “That time I was very scared of taking sessions,” Sheetal says. “My coaches supported me so well. They told me that you can do it. Just breathe and take the session.” 

Shetty eventually settled in and moved up the ranks to become a senior coach at 19 before transitioning to her current role. “I feel I have made a lot of progress and I learned so many things.” 

Among the things she has learned is how to manage her finances. Her mother, who is a single parent, worked as a security guard to support the family. But now it is Shetty who supports her mother and her younger brother. “I do the budget. I pay the rent. I look after everything at home,” she says. “I even paid for my wedding myself. I feel proud that I did this all by myself.”

Becoming a coach also gave Shetty the confidence to get her personal life in order. She explains that she was in an abusive relationship earlier, but didn’t believe she could get out of it. “The programme opened my eyes to my rights. I don’t think I could have done this without it.”

Shetty is determined to help other girls from similar backgrounds become leaders and agents of change. “I have seen the change in myself and if I can help other girls change in the same way, why not?” she says. 

‘I stand up for myself’ 

Maitrayana has the usual set of indicators to measure baselines and end-lines of those who go through the YPI. But over the course of the programme’s 16-year existence, the key indicators of change are more incremental and harder to quantify. It is the girl who goes home and tells her parents that her brother needs to help around the house as well; it is the girl who stands up for other girls in the community and helps them join the programme; it is the girl who discusses menstruation with her parents. 

“More than measuring, the indicators would be small incremental steps towards speaking up, talking about things that are important to them,” van Dam says. “That is something we can see and hear from them. Does their mobility increase? Can they negotiate with their parents? What are they wearing when they play?”

Shweta Gupta, 18, said that prior to going through YPI in 2016, she was an extremely shy person who lacked confidence and the programme gave her the platform to learn about her rights and become a decision-maker. “I got the chance to identify myself and my qualities…and I can now stand up for myself and who I am.” 

Gupta, who lives in Goregaon, is a junior coach in the programme, and is in her second year as a computer science student. She is also simultaneously preparing for the UPSC government exam. She hopes to become an IPS officer so that she can influence policy on social issues and bring about change. 

Even so, there are several challenges. One of them is to fight to have sports accepted as an integral part of a child’s education. “That’s not an easy argument yet,” Kalyani says. “Institutionalising sports is the bigger challenge.”  

According to her, this is an important aspect because schools have some of the best [sports] infrastructure, especially in rural areas, but this often goes unused. Some schools are happy to provide access to their facilities provided Maitrayana takes the sessions because they don’t have a PT (physical training) teacher. Others see sports simply as a way to win medals and accolades for the school, rather than as something that can contribute to personal development. 

At the same time, it is also important to create pathways for competition for those who excel at a sport and wish to compete. “You can’t say, ‘Play for 40 mins but don’t think of playing for the national team.’” Kalyani said. 

Unfortunately, access to tournaments for most of their girls remains difficult, even at a district level. 

These are problems the organisation can’t solve on its own. “We are one of the largest netball development organisations by default, but if you want to take it to scale, the investment that is needed from the government and institutions is much greater,” Kalyani said. “[Therefore] advocacy is very important for us.” 

She hopes for a future in which government, business and sporting organisations can come together to make sports more accessible to women, so the gender equal society that Maitrayana envisions becomes a reality.

Edited by Divya Sethu

So around 2006, while attending college and coaching football at the NGO Magic Bus, Ashok wanted to offer guidance to some of the children in his neighbourhood. He knew a few children who had dropped out, and wanted to convince them to go back. 

Rather than lecturing them, however, he wanted to “bring them together”, he says. He chanced upon the idea of using sport as a hook. 

So he decided to coach them in football. He arranged to meet around 18 boys at Oval Maidan at 4.30 pm one Saturday. He wasn’t confident they would all show up, but they did. The boys had a good time and they agreed to do it again the following week.

Initially, some of the children refused to play with others because of caste, religion, or regional differences. Ashok decided to group those children into the same team and instituted a rule that when a player scores, the whole team has to celebrate, or the goal would not count. 

“In one year, they forgot about caste, religion, etc,” the 34-year-old says. “I also noticed a change in them. They stopped using bad language and had more discipline.”

He also insisted that if they wanted to keep playing football, they had to go to school. Some of them had dropped out, so he enrolled them in a local NGO to improve their reading and writing. 

‘Magnificent, aspirational’

Over time, the original group of boys began to bring their friends along. “They thought if we can change, their other friends can also change,” Ashok says. 

It was hard for him to manage the growing numbers financially, but in 2008 CNN-IBN gave him the Real Hero Award, which came with a cash prize of Rs 3.45 lakh. Ashok used that money to buy new equipment and uniforms, and also rented a community centre in Ambedkar Nagar for the kids, which remained open 24 hours. The centre is still operational today. 

By 2010, the programme had 300 children. “I was trying to support everyone, but then the money got over,” he recalls. 

When Ashok approached people for funds, he was asked if he had a bank account and was a registered NGO. “I said, ‘I don’t want to register. I just want to do it.’ But people wanted their tax deduction.”

He realised it would be difficult to support the children without registering the NGO, so in 2010, the Oscar Foundation was formally instituted. 

The name was inspired by the Academy Awards, with the idea being that the Oscar is something “magnificent and aspirational”. The name stands for ‘Organisation for Social Change, Awareness and Responsibility’.

However, this didn’t immediately solve Ashok’s funding woes. When he would approach a corporation, they would always ask if he had any existing corporate support. When he said no, they would demur too. “[Getting] the first one was very difficult,” he said.

It eventually took a bit of subterfuge. A few employees from the Indian Hotels Company (Taj), who had heard about Ashok’s initiative, visited the ground in their personal capacity during a training session. Here, he took some photos with them. 

Around the same time, an article about Ashok had appeared in Readers Digest and based on it, he managed to get a meeting with the CSR team at IDBI Bank. He showed the IDBI team the photos of him with the Taj employees. The IDBI team assumed that Taj was a sponsor and agreed to support him. Then Ashok went to Kotak Bank and told them about IDBI, and they agreed to support him too. “Now I am not using Taj Hotels,” he laughs

With an eye on the goal 

Govind Rathod, now 29, was one of Ashok’s original 18 boys. He was raised in Ambedkar Nagar and knew ‘Ashok bhaiyya’. His parents worked in the fish market and he attended a local school. When he was 12, however, he dropped out and moved with his family to Panvel, where he worked in a small canteen and then in construction.

Two years later, during a visit to Mumbai, he met Ashok, who convinced him to start playing football. By the time Ashok introduced his ‘no-school, no-football’ rule, Govind was hooked. 

“I was totally addicted to football … I told my parents that I want to stay here only and want to study,” Govind says. Fortunately for him, his elder brother supported him and helped him get readmitted. To pay his fees, he sold magazines and newspapers at traffic signals and washed toilets in a few buildings. 

Over time, Govind picked up life skills from the football practices as well. “I learned about confidence building, the importance of education, and why we need to stop child marriage,” he said. 

Child marriage was personal for him, he says, for his parents had already chosen a girl for him. “I fought with my family to not get married,” he says. “No one in my family had completed Class 10 — I wanted to be the first.”

In his time with Oscar, Govind travelled to Brazil in 2014 during the FIFA World Cup, to South Korea to attend a United Nations Youth Leadership Camp, and to Vietnam to attend an Adidas Football Exchange Program. 

He also went on to finish college and earned a scholarship to study sports management in Germany. In one of those coincidences that make you think fate must be at work, Govind’s interview for the scholarship was at the Hoechst House in Mumbai, where he used to work. 

“I had my interview on the 10th floor, and I used to wash the bathrooms on the 7th and 8th floors,” he recalls. “Somehow, I got selected and went to Germany for five months. I was the first guy in my family to have a passport, the first to fly in an airplane, and the first to speak English.” 

“I pushed myself, but Oscar Foundation gave me the opportunity and helped me to reach that level. From zero to hero. I can say that,” he laughs.

Most recently, Street Football World (an organisation using football for social change on a global level and supporting Oscar Foundation) invited him to attend the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, where he watched England play against Iran. 

Given all these accomplishments, it is not surprising that there has been a marked change in his community’s attitude towards Oscar Foundation. “In the start, the community would say I am just wasting my time,” Govind notes. “For this reason, in the beginning, a few of those 18 left the programme. They didn’t believe [in it at the time]. Now half of the community’s children are part of Oscar’s programmes.”

As a first-generation Oscar “graduate,” Govind has also become a role model for the next generation of kids from the community. “That is a responsibility for me and I think about how to set a good example. I want to tell all the children that nothing is impossible if you have a passion and are dedicated to your goals and dreams.”

Kicking stereotypes to the curb 

A few years after starting the boys’ team, Ashok wanted to start a girl’s team as well, but the parents didn’t think football was for girls. They were worried about their daughters getting injured or developing darker skin from being in the sun, both of which could potentially affect their marriage prospects. 

Ashok finally broke through by threatening to stop teaching the boys if the girls weren’t allowed to. “They agreed to send the girls once a week for one hour,” he says. 

He then resorted to a roundabout way to form an actual girls’ team. In 2011, a girls’ tournament was held in Cooperage in Mumbai, and Ashok convinced a few girls to show up by telling them it was a picnic. The girls had never played as a team before, and didn’t even know the rules. 

Ashok told them to not use their hands, to listen to the referee, and stop the other team from scoring. “They stood in front of the goal like a wall and just played defence,” he says. The girls lost the game on penalty kicks, but gained a huge boost of confidence in the process. The organisers also gave them a uniform and shoes. 

“They told their parents — we got shoes, T-shirts, and many other things. So, parents thought the girls would keep getting stuff and kept sending their daughters. Now we have 1,600 girls in the programme and they have been to France, Denmark, Russia, and England. They even won the Dana Cup in Denmark.”

Off the field, the Oscar team teaches the girls about menstrual hygiene and gender equality as well as life skills. 

Sonal (name changed), who is 14, joined Oscar Foundation in 2017. She lives with her mother in Bandra and attends a municipal school. Her mother is a domestic worker and is separated from her father. 

Sonal says she wasn’t physically active before, but now football has become a fun hobby. “I love the vibe on the ground, and get to meet a lot of new people and make new friends. It feels good to participate regularly in physical activity,” she explains. 

She adds that Oscar has helped her to develop life skills off the field as well. “My coaches take a lot of interest in helping us, beyond football. Learning about life skills and implementing the same has brought a difference in me. My communication skills are much better now.”

Thirteen-year-old Renu (name changed) discovered Oscar in 2019, when some of her friends in the community began attending the all-girls football sessions near her house in Badhwar Park in Mumbai. Renu, who wants to become a teacher, says that in addition to football, she likes participating in music sessions and gender training. 

She credits Oscar with bringing these new experiences to her door. “I play football, know how to play the drums and use a computer. I am happy to have such opportunities.” 

14000 children impacted 

Oscar measures the success of its programme in a number of ways. Attendance at football and in school is one of them. 

“We know that 90% of our kids passed their Class 10 and 12,” Ashok said. “Those that don’t pass, we follow up so they don’t drop out. Once they fail, they don’t want to continue. We counsel them and help them to continue.”

They also do pre- and post-testing for life skills such as decision-making, critical thinking, and gender equality as defined by the World Health Organization. They also test football skills and have started checking if any children are at their proper weight in case they need help with nutrition. “We give milk, bananas, and sometimes eggs,” Ashok explains. 

Today, Oscar operates in Mumbai, Daman, Rajasthan and Karnataka. Ashok’s focus for this year is to expand in Daman and Rajasthan. In total, the programme currently impacts 4,200 children, while almost 14,000 children have been through the programme over the years. 

What remains a challenge, he notes, is explaining the benefits of sport to those who have never experienced it themselves. 

“It is very difficult to explain that sport brings change to the community in a very fun way, but slowly,” Ashok says. 

Because of this, fundraising for sports also remains a challenge in India. “As many as 90% of corporations give to education; only 0.2% is given to sports for development organisations. So, there is a challenge, but…challenges always teach you [something].”

‘Something magical must be happening’ 

When asked about the high points of the programme, Ashok mentions two girls from the programme who played for India in the recent Under-17 World Cup, as well as one who plays for the Maharashtra team. On the boys’ side, two have been selected by Bengaluru FC, one by Mumbai City and one by Jamshedpur FC in the Indian Super League. 

Outside of football, Ashok says, one of their former students is now a supervisor at one of India’s leading health and fitness platforms, while another is doing his MBA in finance from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies.

“There are many stories like this through this programme,” he notes. “These children never even dreamed about playing a sport, but now they are going abroad. They are thinking about getting a job at the corporate level, not just serving as delivery boy[s] or working in a shop.”

Ashok is also particularly pleased that many of the youth from the community come back to Oscar to lead their programmes. 

“When I reflect, I feel something magical must be happening. It’s hard to believe my journey,” he says. 

Curious, he joined a local club team that occasionally practised at Greater Kailash (GK) park, located in the southern part of New Delhi. During these practices, he noticed that a few kids from the area would hang around and watch. Some would even join in. 

“They were from Zamrudpur [a nearby locality] and came from socially and economically lower strata,” Stephen, now 26, recalls. “They were housemaids’ kids or daily labourers’ kids.” 

However, most of the kids who wanted to play never got the chance, so in October 2015, they started their own team called GK Mad. 

The children in the team were between the ages of 10 to 16 and played twice a day daily, says Stephen, who volunteered to help them out. He was immediately impressed by their attitude, which he says fit with the values of the sport. 

“They didn’t get upset about losing. There were no pointing fingers. Even if they were losing 13-0, they would keep encouraging each other,” he said. 

Their limited funds meant they played mostly in Delhi and Sonipat. But in 2017, they scraped together the money to travel to Bengaluru for a national tournament. Stephen says GK Mad surprised everyone by winning Division II in their debut, but for him, “the more important and beautiful part was that the team won the Spirit Award”. 

The ‘ultimate’ solution 

In Ultimate, players are rated by the opposing team on five parameters — knowledge of the rules and how to use them, effort to avoid fouls and body contact, fair-mindedness, attitude and self-control, and communication. 

When an alleged foul is called by a player, the rest of the players freeze in place while the two concerned players discuss the incident. They can also request input from other players, who are expected to say what they saw regardless of which team it benefits. The team with the highest Spirit rating wins the Spirit Award. 

“Competition can never come at the cost of the spirit of the game,” Stephen says.

It was around this time the name Y-Ultimate came up as well, though the organisation was not formally registered yet. 

“Whenever we tried to communicate what we were trying to do, almost every time the question that came up was, ‘Why frisbee? Why not football? Why not kabbadi? Why not cricket?’ So we took the name Y-Ultimate to answer that — because we believe the sport is the ‘ultimate’ solution to the problems [of lack of education] we are trying to address,” Stephen said. 

He would go on to spend two years with Teach for India in Hyderabad, during which he tested how Ultimate and education might work together. 

If students misbehaved in his class, they had to play Ultimate at 6 am as a “punishment”. It was an instant success. “It stopped being a punishment because it was fun, and when they were in the classroom, they were more relaxed and didn’t have the energy to cause trouble,” he said. 

He says that by the end of his fellowship, three schools in Hyderabad were playing Ultimate. “The experience incentivised me to move back to Delhi and do this further,” he notes. 

Beyond just a sport 

When Stephen returned to GK Mad in 2018, the team was being coached by Vivekanand Srivastava (the pair knew each other through Ultimate circles). Srivastava, 44, had become “obsessed” with the sport and would go on to play for India on two occasions. At the time, he was using his savings to help fund the team, which numbered about 30 to 40 kids split between the A and B teams.

Among those kids was Sunny, who began playing Ultimate at 16, and says the sport’s unique structure has changed him for the better. 

“Mai pehle logon se baat karne mein bahut hich-kichata tha, but ab mai sabse baat karne mein comfortable hu (I’d hesitate a lot before talking to other people, but now I am a lot more comfortable). I was also not good at resolving fouls, but playing with Y-Ultimate helped me develop patience and now I am much better at resolving them.” 

Thanks to playing in tournaments for Y-Ultimate, Sunny has also received the kind of exposure that otherwise would not have had access to. 

“The tournaments have a bhhaiyya or didi who is an artist, or lawyer, or a development sector worker,” Stephen says. “Meeting people like that from different spheres of life inspires the children to dream bigger than they ever had before. That sense of belief creeps in.” 

“They have come up because of the effort they have put in. They have that belief that if I put in the effort, I will do better than what I am today,” he says. 

He also notes that the game keeps the children out of trouble. The neighbourhood they come from is a rough one, where delinquency, drugs and petty crime are common. 

“There are kids in our teams who have made multiple trips to the police station, but now they have cleaned up,” Srivastava says. “Through observation and experience, we understood the power of this sport and thought, ‘Why not spread it to more children?’.” 

To help accomplish their goals, the pair formally registered their organisation as Flyingdisc Development Foundation in 2019. But it remains known as Y-Ultimate among the general public. 

At the time, Y-Ultimate ran three programmes. The first was training and funding GK Mad; the second was a coaching programme; and the third was a vector model where they supported other organisations with models and curricula, providing them with a blueprint for how to incorporate ultimate frisbee into their programmes. 

‘I have become a good person’

Stephen says they impacted 1,200 kids through workshops and other activities in their first year alone. 

“Before COVID, we were in 11 schools and communities in Delhi,” he says. “We were also in three schools in Manipur, as well as three schools in Pune and five in Mumbai through a partner organisation.”

In 2020, three of their players – Kalpana Bisht, Megha and Sanya – were selected for India’s U-20 Women’s team, with Megha as the captain.

Megha, who is now 17, started playing Ultimate at 11 and became a coach in 2020. “When I started playing, I was a very quiet girl. I had no confidence. But now my confidence level and communication skills have improved a lot,” she said.

She also credits Y-Ultimate with impacting her life for the better. “Y-Ultimate has helped me a lot — both on and off the field. I am able to play without the tension of money (sic). Because of Y-Ultimate, I become a really good person in life (sic),” Megha says. “I am and I will always be very grateful to Y-Ultimate for always supporting me.”

Unfortunately, the pandemic forced Y-Ultimate to scale down significantly. “Mission 2022 was to reach the world championship, but COVID hit and took us five years back,” Stephen says. “Right now, we are supporting four teams in Delhi. We are trying to focus our efforts in Delhi and get our footing, and then look at building further.” 

For this year, their target is to work with 300 children in Delhi.

Fundraising remains perhaps their biggest challenge. “Sport is the bottom of the pyramid for CSR, and Ultimate is at the bottom [among sports],” Stephen opines. 

Regardless, the organisation has already had a significant impact on a number of children. Stephen says that 11 of their first 15 kids in the programme have become youth coaches, with five going to college, and three earning a degree from Delhi University. 

Additionally, one of their players Kalpana is now a PE teacher at a trust school in Delhi, while two others have transitioned into a design career. “Seeing how much these kids have grown gives me a lot of joy,” Stephen says. 

Y-Ultimate has also rethought its model since the pandemic. Previously, they would partner with other organisations and schools to keep their budget down. But when COVID hit and partner organisations stopped operating, they lost contact with the kids as a result. Now they connect with the kids directly through their parents. 

They have also opened a community centre where children can come and study or simply get away from home if they need to. “It is more resource intensive, but we think it will be more sustainable with the relationships we can build,” Stephen says. 

In 2017, professional football player Tanvie Hans moved from Delhi to Bengaluru. In the past, she had represented English club teams like Tottenham Hotspur Women and Fulham Ladies FC before returning to India. 

“I moved to Bengaluru because I felt the pulse of football was growing a lot more here than in Delhi,” she recalls. 

In the new city, her main contact was Swetha Subbiah, a personal trainer and one of four Nike-certified fitness instructors in India, with over a decade of experience. Tanvie first met Swetha through a Nike commercial campaign in 2016.    

“One evening in November 2017, after much convincing, Swetha took me out to her friend’s party. At the party, her friend was super excited when she heard that I was a footballer and asked ‘Why don’t you teach me and a few of my girlfriends how to play?’.” 

“Responding to her request, we booked a ground for that weekend. We didn’t have too many expectations and thought that 4-5 women would turn up for it. We thought it would be a one-time ‘fun session’. Much to our surprise, however, 17 women turned up,” Tanvie tells The Better India.  

Tanvie and Swetha designed a 1.5-hour session for the women, who were mostly in their mid-30s. For the first half hour, Swetha deployed her skills as a fitness instructor and made them warm up to prepare their bodies for sport. Then, Tanvie organised “some fun football drills”.  

“We had music in the background, and the whole idea was to make sure they have a good time and maybe learn a little bit in the process. After the first session, the women came back to us and said they loved it. They wanted us to organise these sessions for them every weekend. That’s how our community started and grew,” says Tanvie. 

This session gave birth to Sisters In Sweat, a community exclusively “for women, by women, and stitched together by sport”. 

Founded by Swetha and Tanvie, the objective of this for-profit organisation is to bridge the gap of women dropping out of sports, especially after school or college. With multiple sports formats including football, basketball, and touch rugby, they give a community of over 3,700 women from many walks of life regular access to sports. 

“When Sisters In Sweat started in 2017, it was primarily a bunch of my friends between the ages of 35 and 40. But since 2017, we’ve grown significantly. The average age has come down to 25-30, but we do have girls as young as 12,14 and 15 playing with us. The oldest member that played with us was 65 years old,” says Swetha.  

“We have women in the corporate world, lower management executive level and upper management like CEOs of companies. We also have a handful of entrepreneurs, mothers, homemakers and college students,” she adds 

“Initially, the assumption was that at least in college you had the opportunity to play sports. But what we are understanding now is that even in educational institutions, unless you make it to the school or college team, that opportunity is actually quite limited. Overall, we are catering to women of a variety of profiles and age groups.” 

Opening avenues for women to play sports

Why do women drop out of sports, especially after school or college? 

“It has been ingrained in our mindsets and our culture that sport is essentially for boys and men, given the aggressive nature of contact sports. At the school level, some institutions offer sports for women but are very selective with the kind they offer. This is seen in colleges as well. After school and college, even having access to organised sports is practically impossible, which is why I feel women drop out. They just lack the opportunities to play regularly,” argues Tanvie. 

And so, Sisters In Sweat is trying to open new avenues for women to play sports. 

“We are providing opportunities for women to play with other women so that they feel comfortable and safe. We organise it all for them so that they just have to turn up and have a good time,” she adds.  

Sisters in Sweat has an on-ground presence in Bengaluru and Mumbai. All their physical sessions are organised there, primarily in Bengaluru, which also doubles as their headquarters. They launched their Mumbai operations earlier this year and note that “there has been a good response”. In the long run, their aim is to create a pan-India community spanning multiple cities. 

“In Bengaluru, we run weekly football, basketball, badminton, and touch rugby sessions, as well as organise runs every Sunday and cycling events every quarter. We also do swim sessions in collaboration with the Nisha Millet Academy. For everything else apart from swimming, we have hired our own coaches and organise sessions ourselves,” explains Tanvie.  

Sisters in Sweat has also recently tied up with BFC (Bengaluru Football Club). They give community members tickets to watch their men’s football game live at the stadium whenever it happens in the city. This is just another way for them to encourage women to be a part of the city’s sporting culture and watch the sport that they are actually playing.  

“We are also planning to collaborate with other such football clubs across India. We also collaborate with athleisure wear brands or brands that promote healthy eating habits,” she adds. 

Finding a sense of community 

But how do their sessions encourage women to stick with sports? 

Tanvie says that for one, their membership is free and a one-time process. “Anyone interested can go on our website, fill in the details and book any event or session. You pay per event or session but you don’t pay for membership. We have kept membership free because we don’t want a fee to become another barrier for women to join our growing community.” 

“Also, as much as possible, we design the session to be fun. When a woman attends our session, she feels like she had a good time, burned calories and made friends,” she adds.  

Sisters In Sweat also markets itself as an organisation that presents sports as a recreation and social activity for women.

“We emphasise a lot on the community model. Even after the session is over, we all go out for breakfast together and get to know each other. In almost every session, we have new people joining us and that is exactly what we want. We want the community to keep growing. We always tell women to start by attending one session and that they would want to keep coming back,” says Tanvie.  

Among the women who have found this sense of community is Tanvi Kaur, a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with her own practice.

“As a sports person, it has been a great way to play a sport again thanks to Sisters In Sweat. Their sessions gave me the opportunity to play the team sports that I used to play in school and college. I played basketball at a national level, and picking up a ball after 15-16 years was a big deal for me,” says Tanvi. 

“Attending their sessions has also helped me assimilate better into the city and create a social space. I don’t know whether it’s a Bengaluru or a Sisters In Sweat thing, but the community or sisterhood here is extremely inclusive, welcoming and encouraging. That spirit runs in the founders of Sisters In Sweat and their whole community,” adds Tanvi.        

As part of their community offering, Sisters In Sweat is also trying to create an ecosystem for women in sports where they have the opportunity of finding gainful employment as coaches or in managerial roles. Within their team, they have one girl who is a professional football player and heads the operations for Bengaluru. They have several female coaches. 

In fact, their first preference is to hire a female coach in whichever sport they launch. “Of course, there is a bit of a roadblock there because there aren’t too many female coaches currently, but we are hoping that it will change. Whether you want to do something at the management level with us or you just want to be a coach, we try to provide those opportunities,” says Swetha. 

Where women find inclusivity 

Sisters In Sweat plans to expand its operations in pan India over the course of the next few years. Having said that, from time to time, they do host one-off events in different cities or plan to do so before they fully establish themselves in a new location. 

Swetha explains, “We are a for-profit organisation and have a couple of revenue streams, primarily coming from brands that associate with us like Manchester City FC, Puma, Nike, Bare Necessities, The Whole Truth Foods, etc. We also look to partner with brands in the health and wellness space as much as possible.”  

As far as their sessions and the revenue they generate, they “try to keep the sessions as affordable as possible” because they want to be inclusive. 

“Most of our weekly sessions for sports like touch-rugby, football and basketball are priced at Rs 500 in Bengaluru and Rs 700 in Mumbai (excluding GST). In Bengaluru, we also do game nights and run clubs priced a bit lower than our weekly sessions. Every week, we organise about 12 to 14 sessions in Bengaluru and 2-3 in Mumbai. Every month, we organise anywhere between 50 to 60 sessions in both cities excluding our events,” says Swetha. 

They earn revenue through sponsorships for their events, sessions, etc. Most of the time, each of their events has a different sponsor like Tata Tetley and Living Food. On 27 November, they have their ‘Sweat Fest’ coming up, sponsored by the athleisure brand CAVA. Their next big event in Bengaluru is on 18 December, hosting the annual Christmas football tournament.   

“As our community has grown and women tell us stories of how much joy sports has brought into their lives, we were really inspired. This gave us the purpose and reason to invest all our time into building this community,” notes Swetha.

You can follow ‘Sisters In Sweat’ on Instagram here.

Edited by Divya Sethu; All pictures courtesy: Sisters In Sweat.

When Suheil Tandon started Pro Sport Development (PSD) in 2013, he did so with the intention of helping talented underprivileged and marginalised youth pursue excellence in sports.

In India, resources for sports are the main problem, not ability.

PSD aimed to do its part to fill that gap and help develop the next generation of star athletes.

However, an incident at the start of their first project gave Tandon pause. 

 

A promising 15-year-old female weightlifter did not return to school after the summer holidays. When PSD asked the school authorities about her, they discovered that her family had arranged her wedding during the break. For the girl’s family, her potential weightlifting career was irrelevant to her future.

“This news hit me and the team hard,” Tandon, who is 33, says. “We were faced with some harsh realities in the context that we were working in, and it made all the sporting achievements seem inconsequential.”

In the short term, Tandon tweaked the programme to include the wider benefits of sports, but PSD was still geared towards building medal winners. By that measure, it was a success, with the athletes earning over 25 medals on the national stage. But by then Tandon had realised focusing primarily on sporting achievement in isolation would not address the larger social barriers to playing sports in India, particularly for girls. So, in 2015, PSD officially expanded its mission.

“At this point, we took a conscious and strategic decision to change our vision and move forward by utilising sports as a tool for the holistic development of young people,” Tandon says. In other words, the organisation would seek to develop a young person’s overall human potential through the promotion of an inclusive and sustainable sporting culture.

Tandon had always been passionate about sports, having played and watched multiple sports growing up, but it wasn’t until he was studying mathematics and economics in college that he discovered a career in sports was a viable option. “With some sound advice from a family friend working in the sports industry, I decided to pursue a sports management degree from Loughborough University in the UK,” he says.

That’s where his interest in developing athletes at the grassroots level first took hold, which led to the creation of PSD with the support of family and friends.

Today, PSD works in 15 states across India and has reached out to 11,412 young people, 51 per cent of whom have been girls. Its two core teams are based out of Delhi and Bhubaneshwar, respectively.

“Whenever PSD works in other states, we do so in collaboration with local organisations, while our team members from Delhi or Bhubaneswar travels to these locations,” Tandon says

Through its activities, school children are given access to structured physical activity and sports-based programming, which in turn helps them develop soft skills such as teamwork and leadership.

PSD has also taken on the more ambitious goal of changing the perception of sports in the country. “[In India] Sports is not considered a fundamental right that all children and youth must have access to, as defined by the UN,” Tandon says. “Neither is sports considered an activity that can be utilised to drive positive change within the lives of young people and within communities.”

The impact of their work can be seen in the personality development of children such as Shibani Pradhan, whose father drives his own auto rickshaw. Pradhan was 11 when she joined the PSD program in Bhubaneswar. Now 14, a class 10 student at Saraswati Sishu Vidhya Mandir, Pradhan used to play games with her friends but didn’t know much about organised sports. Now she enjoys playing cricket and badminton in particular. 

She says taking part in PSD’s programs has been “a lot of fun” and she has learned what is expected of a team player in sports, as well as learning about leadership. There have been important benefits off the field as well. “I am much more comfortable talking to boys,” she says. “We have learned there is not much difference between boys and girls. [The program] has also improved my studies because I have become mentally stronger. My communication has also improved.”

The centrepiece of PSD’s efforts is the Community Sports Program (CSP), which has reached over 3,000 children in Bhubaneshwar. The CSP also involves developing community trainers and teachers thereby ensuring the program is local, sustainable, and inclusive.

During the lockdown, PSD had to switch to an online model that included live workshops for those who had access to an internet connection. Among them was Srabani Patra, currently a class 10 student at Saraswati Sishu Vidya Mandir school in Bhubaneshwar. It was through CSP in 2021 that Patra learned about gender stereotypes, particularly in the home, where parents treat sons and daughters differently. “I want all parents to see their sons and daughters equally,” she says.

The workshops gave Patra the confidence to discuss gender norms with her father, Krushna Chandra Patra, which in turn has led her entire family to start questioning existing gender norms in their community.

It’s precisely this kind of change that PSD hopes to inspire across the country as the organisation grows. It’s also how the organisation measures the success of its programs since it changed its mission in 2015. According to Tandon, the organisation uses “quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to evaluate the outcomes and impact of the initiatives”. Participants fill out surveys at the start and end of programs to analyse personal development. PSD also interviews trainers, peers, teachers, and parents to gauge the nature and extent of any changes.

When it comes to the CSP, the increase in physical activity is one measuring stick. Beyond that Tandon says, “success for us is defined by the soft skills and values they are able to develop and implement in their daily lives, as well as their change in attitudes towards gender norms and stereotypes, and a better understanding of how to articulate life choices and make decisions concerning their own lives.”

While counting the number of medals its athletes won was easier, their current approach is undoubtedly more satisfying. “The best part of my job is that it does not feel like a job,” Tandon says. “During my travels, I also get to interact with young people who have benefitted from their participation in sports, which is always great to experience first-hand.”