When my friend, Anita Lobo, whom I caught up with after several years, told me that she was now working on social development projects using Sport as a medium of change, I didn’t quite believe her. I almost dismissed it as a PR spiel.

After all, apart from a few corporates like TATAs, who’re supporting athletes from weaker sections of the society, the “sports-based social inclusion” model is not used in India. (In Africa, on the other hand, the sports based inclusion model is gaining acceptance, with football and athletics being the chosen mediums).
But, as we continued chatting, and she gave me more details, it was intriguing. Spring Sport & Sustainability (a JV between Spring Worldwide & Perfect Relations Limited) is purely focused on community development, via Sport. In doing so, they involve corporate partners, who step in with time, effort and resources.

The first such experiment, titled ‘GOAL’, was rolled out in the relatively-underprivileged communities of Govindpuri, Aligaon and Sanjay Gandhi Camp, in Delhi. Multiple stakeholders collaborated in this project- NGOs (Naz, Deepalaya, Prerna and FXB); Netball Federation of India; schools and colleges; and Standard Chartered Bank.

70 girls were enrolled in the program, which entailed a 45-hour modular training course covering 3 broad areas of communication, wellness and entrepreneurship, including financial literacy. The girls also received professionally coached Netball sessions once a week. There were scholarships for meritious girls. What however, acted as a major impetus was the fact that the budding Netball team had a chance to qualify & become part of the national team.

38 Standard Chartered executives contributed their time and skills to the success of GOAL by designing the modules on Environment, Communication and Financial Literacy. 

Anjali Gopalan of Naz Foundation is excited about the program’s success. “We wanted the girls to have fun as they learnt. Our focus was to get them out of their shell & make them independent, confident individuals.  When the girls first came in they wouldn’t even lift their heads & now they play as if the world outside doesn’t exist.  They now conduct conversations with confidence”
 
An important indicator of success is the retention rate. An 80% retention was achieved, a very difficult proposition in any sustainable community development.  It has obviously struck a deep chord somewhere. A community elder and father of a girl who plays in the Aligaon netball team admits, “My daughter has changed for the better. When this program started, I wasn’t sure if it will actually work. Now I am sure that her life will be much better than I thought.” [Uska jeevan aur bhi sukhi hoga]

Standard Chartered Bank is committed to supporting this initiative, and plans to extend to Mumbai and Chennai by end of this year. 

Anita is passionate about this whole tri-partite approach involving poor communities, Sport, and companies. I completely agree with her, and eagerly look forward to integrate her ideas into the Growth-for-All movement.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 7:25 am and is filed under NGO, Inclusive Growth, Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR That Works. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.