A new legion of youngsters is spearheading a football revolution in education. Because, they say, the Beautiful Game equips children with vital life skills.
Sunday morning, 6.00 a.m. Eight-year-old Gokul chugs down his milk and tears out of the house, cradling a football in his arm and a bottle of lime juice to go. He pedals away furiously and joins three other cyclists waiting for him at the end of the road.
It may be the most accessible sport but what makes football the most popular one? “It teaches you life,” says Karthik Chandrashekaran, a corporate slogger on weekdays and football coach on weekends for Gokul and a bunch of boys in Bengaluru. “I was a professional tennis player, until I realised that football was my calling. It brought out the best in me,” he says, arranging plastic cones for the kids to dribble around. The boys are done with their warm-up and gather in the middle of the ground. Chandrashekaran kicks the ball in the air; a shrill whistle signals the start of play. Much cacophony ensues.
The ball bounces off Gokul’s chest, dropping down to his leg. He halts for a second, jiggling it under his foot. To his right stands Varun, a rookie, and to his left is Michael, the star of the team, trying to sneak through the army of defenders shadowing him. Gokul can either tackle and take a shot at the goal himself or pass the ball. Gokul kicks it to Varun. The ball comes back to Gokul. The defender who is tailing him slips for a second and Gokul slides the ball past his leg and down the goalpost in one slick manoeuvre. The crowd cheers, as he darts across to his teammates and disappears into a group hug.
Football builds confidence. “But to do well, one needs the support of others,” says Vikas Plakkot, one of the founders of Just for Kicks, an exclusive football programme for children. “As children, everyone craves for flamboyance, to be a striker. My role is to tell them that defending is equally important,” he adds.
A new legion of spirited youngsters is spearheading a football revolution in India. Turning football coaches, they teach the sport not to increase its popularity, but to extend its positive influence on children. Life skills the lesson and football the tool. Good friends Vikas and Neha Sahu were looking for a way to take education beyond the walls of a classroom and help boost attendance. After some soul-searching, they concluded that sports may be the answer.
Just for Kicks kicked off in Pune in 2010. Plakkot and Sahu chalked out a curriculum that drew on the game’s strengths without compromising on fun. The programme was thrown open to interested students, girls and boys, and teams were formed. Soon, attendance improved, and within a year, there was a qualitative difference in the children’s academic involvement and emotional well-being. Today, the programme is being implemented in more than 125 schools in Pune. The recent partnership with Mumbai City FC and the increasing fandom for ISL has spiked interest and boosted motivation. Plakkot says football hones critical thinking; the ability to judge oneself and differentiate between what went right and wrong. “It teaches you to cope with stress and emotion.”
“They learn that victory and loss are part of the game. When they fail an exam, they realise that it’s not the end of the world,” says Chennai-based Vikram Menon, a Junior National Tennis champion and the brain behind Phenomenon Sports League in the city. A chance encounter at a local orphanage where he went to donate used football equipment altered his life forever. “I saw how much happiness a ball brought to the lives of the boys,” he smiles. He went on to start Life is a Ball, an NGO that seeks to improve the lives of under-privileged children through football. Since 2010, the NGO has grown exponentially, offering free sports education in government schools in Chennai, Kanchipuram and Hyderabad. Here, too, the basic premise was to use football as the impetus to make children attend school.
It’s half-time and the boys at Chandrashekaran’s class in Bengaluru huddle under the shade of a mango tree. Some crack jokes. Some animatedly discuss the pervious night’s Arsenal Vs. Manchester United game. Michael wipes a trickle of blood down his knee and shares his juice with the defender who just sent him hurtling on the pitch. Chandrashekaran waves at the boys. The teams regroup.
Life is a Ball included another skill in its curriculum this year: gender equality. “We’ve been making mixed teams, and we found the kids bonding really well, and respect for the opponent also developed,” a value that teachers struggle to teach in a classroom. The biggest moment for Vikram this year was when a group of Class 8 and 9 girls staged a protest outside school, refusing to study unless they were allowed to play on par with the boys.
It’s hard to forget the image of a group of little girls, clad in red-and-white saris and sneakers, plastic flowers adorning their hair, going up on stage to claim their trophy at Gasteiz Cup 2013 in Victoria Gasteiz, Spain. The all-girls team, which contested in the U-14 tournament and won third place, comprises students from Yuwa, a non-profit organisation in Ranchi. In Jharkhand, six out of 10 girls drop out of school and become child brides; thousands are trafficked each year. Yuwa was started in 2009 by Franz Gastler, who believed that team sport could help combat these issues. “In 95 per cent of the cases, parents don’t send their daughters to Yuwa. It’s the girls who choose (and often fight) to come,” says Rose Thomson, Education Director, Yuwa. For girls, especially from rural India, the obstacles are greater, the stakes are higher, and Yuwa’s challenges go beyond encouraging just school attendance. Dissuading parents who want to marry off their teenage daughters, addressing instances of domestic abuse,malnutrition, health problems, ensuring the safety of girls as they walk to and from practice, are some of the issues that the organisation confronts. But why football? “That’s what the girls wanted,” says Thomson. “And when we ask how often they want to practise, they say everyday!”
Yuwa’s Child Development Officer, Neha Baxla, talks about how the game fosters independent thinking. “The girls realised that in their families they are taught that their role, as a girl, as a woman, is to never think about themselves.”
Thomson remembers the time she met the parents of a girl who were planning to marry her off at 13. When she quizzed them, the mother said that she was a child bride herself and such was the norm. “I asked the mother how she had felt then. She said that she was scared and that it was a very bad time. I asked if she wanted the same for her daughter. She had tears in her eyes and asked what she could do. I explained that her daughter wanted to be a teacher and that she could earn money and help them when they grew old. The girl continues to play football and going to school. She was also on a Yuwa team which went to the U.S. to compete in the USA cup.” Indeed, the beautiful game can take children places.
-Originally published in The Sunday Magazine, The Hindu on 13th March 2016
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