Our struggles and how did we overcome them

Starting a project like teaching football is not easy. It seems very easy but actually it`s not. At the beginning of our project, everything was going easy but as time passed things changed. The kids were not regular, plans always changed, there was lack of co-ordinations in the group and the biggest problem was to manage the timings.

I was totally confused what to do. And also there were times I used to feel de-motivated. But I had tremendous support from my teammates. They were always there for me to support and to carry our project ahead.

To come up with solutions, we were used to meet and plan what to do ahead. Our first problem was to deal with kids’ attendance. For this, we decided to make group leaders and give them a group to handle. The role of each group leader was to maintain that each and every member of his group is present. And the leaders were selected voluntarily. Every week a new leader was selected by the group or himself. This plan really worked.

The next problem was of co-ordination between me and my teammates. Our college timings were different so we couldn’t come together as a team. So to cope up with this problem we divided our work amongst three of us. We gave all research-related work to Rishikesh, All work related to kids and family meetings were given to Nizamuddin. I took upon the task of meeting with kids and teach them football. And because of lack of co-ordination there used to be lots of conflicts in the group. We could manage and control this problem only to some extent and are still working on it.

The timings were a big issue in our project. Sometimes we had to delay our practice or cancel it. We were not sure that we will be able to complete our project on time. But when you are passionate about something nothing can stop you; be it your parents, teachers or any other circumstances. And also the most important thing is your willingness to do something. Even though we had problems but we enjoyed every bit of it. We used our strengths to do our project exceptionally well.

Our project was possible because of me and my teammates. Because of our understanding towards each other, our passion and positive attitude towards it, we could successfully do this project. We kept calm and could fulfil our dreams. We didn’t stop here. We are taking our project forward and starting the phase two of our project.

Education through Sports

(The children from our project)

Imagine living in a community where everyday fights and violence are common! The community in Mumbai that I live in, children start smoking and chewing gutkha at the age as young as six or seven. Every day one can see fights on a very big level. Everyday the cops come in our community. 

All of this really affected me. Everyday I have to live in fear of getting caught by cops or beaten by them. We were not allowed to sit down at our own buildings or anywhere in a group. At same time, I also had the fear that my own siblings do not get trapped or involved in these fights and substance abuse too.

I wanted to do something about it but I had no clue what to do. 

Sports have played a very crucial role in my life. It has become passion of my life, especially football. My love for sports gave me an interesting idea.  As my SLP (Service Learning Programme) self project, I came up with an idea of educating children through sports. As football was my passion and strength, I came to know that these kids are also interested in sports.

(With my team)

I tried to understand the problem with my project teammates. The kids in my community have nothing to do after their school. And because of this all the problems arise. So basically if they had any meaningful thing to do with their time, they will stop fighting and everything else will also end.

To fill this gap, I, along with my teammates, started teaching them football. My main purpose was to do something creative and constructive and also to keep the kids engaged in sports so that they cannot create any issue in community.

For the project, we gathered around 20 kids from the age group of 7 to 15yrs. We targeted this age group because they were the primary reason of fights. I started teaching football as well as taking session on violence. We then also started talking about nutrition and other important topics such as child sexual abuse, alcoholism and values.

 The situation in my community has improved a lot. Finally, we can sit anywhere without any fear.