Aged between 8-16 years, this bunch of enterprising kids surprised us with their interest in football and enthusiasm. They have grown from strength to strength with their understanding of the game and outlook of a life beyond their current predicament.

The camp was initiated with the able guidance of Maarten De Kruijf, a licensed UEFA coach along with skilled volunteer coaches and the kids learnt to play the Slum Soccer way.

After a certain point, when we knew we had gained their trust, we appointed two senior members at the center as coaches, provided them with the necessary equipment’s for coaching. We found that not only did the seniors rise up to the task, they exceeded our expectations and ended up becoming role models for the other kids.

Shoes & Jerseys

Having conducted training sessions for almost a year, we decided that it was time that their football skills were put to test on a public forum. They were entered in a 5v5 tournament and given 2 weeks to practice. We initiated proceedings to select the best players at the centre and equipped them with football studs and jerseys which were sponsored by generous donations by our well wishers.

For the kids, who could not afford to buy shoes for school, the joy at wearing proper football shoes knew no bounds. We spent a lot of time educating them on the need to use proper footwear for playing football and even had to teach some of them how to tie laces! They realized how serious we were about their fate and doubled their commitment to prove our faith in them.

Used to playing football at the beach, they decided that they had to practise on a hard surface to be prepared. They travelled to the nearest ground which was around 5 kilometres away for these 2 weeks and underwent vigorous training sessions.

Tournament

It was the finally the day the kids had been waiting for! They reached the ground much earlier than the schedule time for some light training sessions even after we told them that they did not need it. This was a pleasant surprise for us and seeing them wear the new jerseys and football shoes, practice like professional footballers, we could not help but sense a collective bunch of success stories.

Team Slum Soccer was to play against Dandanakka Boys, which was regular in the football tournaments circuit. One look at their opponents and the team were immediately nervous, at their size and their skills. They began to doubt themselves and we did our best to motivate them.

Though, a little low on confidence, they marched on to the pitch showing none of it. To everyone’s surprise, including ours, we scored two goals in the first two minutes of kick off. Their opponents couldn’t help but smile at this bunch of slum kids who had clearly outplayed them from the word go. But soon, the heat and the pressure, took its toll and we were on our back foot till half time having conceded two goals due to some clever moves by the opponents. The second half got off to a bright start and the entire crowd witnessed football as its best, end to end, bringing out the best from the goal keepers. With neither team able to break each other’s defence, the game went to penalties.

The team was totally drained as this was the first time they played competitive football in unfamiliar surroundings. But, they did their job by scoring off the first two chances with the opponents matching our score. We were finally broken down with the third penalty and ended up on the losing side.

The kids took the defeat in the right spirit and congratulated their opponents as we had taught them to. There were hand shakes all around and our performance was encouraged by everyone around. Little did they think that a bunch of kids from the fishermen community, would match them shot to shot.

The first thing the kids did after this was to apologize to us and assure that the next time around, they will not let us down. We, on the other hand, were bowled over by their performance and words could not express our joy, all the hard work so many people had put in for the past year had borne fruits!

We realized that this team is progressing in the right direction and with the correct amount of training and impetus, Team Slum Soccer was headed to greater heights!

Slumsoccer at Tedx 2013

When I was sitting on the plane from Ghana to India on my way to work with Slum Soccer as a volunteer coach with Coaches Across Continents, I was searching for images I had for Indian football and couldn’t come up with anything. I knew that the country had a tremendous passion for cricket and generally when I saw Indian athletes it was men dressed in white outfits and playing a game I just couldn’t comprehend. Now after my experience working with Slum Soccer in Nagpur, I have hundreds of images of youth players looking to learn the next skills and strong male and female coaches loving and teaching the game.

I was completely thrilled to make this trip to India to work alongside the coaches of Slum Soccer and to learn more about how the organization was using football as a tool in their vital work in their community. From the beginning, Abhijeet relayed to my colleague and I that many of his coaches were not only new to organized football but also new to coaching. His main priority was to provide the coaches with training so that they could learn how to become better coaches and how to see football as not only a sport, but as a means to support their players in their total development. In addition, the coaches needed to learn how to run a session, how to actually deliver games, find and act on teachable moments and learn ways in which to develop the entire player.

On the first day of the ten-day training we were greeted with smiles, laughter and a desire to learn that livened my own body and mind. I was thrilled to see how enthusiastic the coaches were to discover new and to refine and practice what they had already learned. Right away it was clear that the group was a tight- knit community and there was no problem when games were played that required teamwork, cooperation or communication. As part of the training, we focused on the development of a coaches’ voice and day-by-day we saw this development, particularly from the voices of the female coaches. For me personally that was really special, to see the involvement and role of the female coaches in the group of coaches and in the greater organization.

I had a very distinctopportunity with the group of female coaches when I asked them if they all could join me to take part in the pilot of the Guerreiras Project. A good friend and former teammate, Caitlin Fisher, created the project in Brazil using football as a medium, along with other tools to work towards gender justice. The platform which I tested out included a video documenting the lives of female footballers in Brazil as well as strong images that were used to create discussion about women in sports, gender roles, expectations and much more. I still think about the discourse that the group of us created in the small hotel room in India. For me personally it was incredibly interesting to hear about each coach’s story and to better understand their passion for the sport when learning about the many challenges they faced just to get to the field to play or coach. It was also a time for each of them to reflect on their achievements, challenges and goals in regards to football and life in general.

I didn’t return to work with Slum Soccer in 2012, but nonetheless I heard immediately about the progress of the coaches and their tremendous enthusiasm for learning new games and for teaching others. Based on the experiences shared from the CAC team, I saw that the Slum Soccer coaches had completely taken ownership of the games from year one and had incorporated them into their own program. The coaches led the training of the next generation of Slum Soccer coaches and confidently managed a two-week training with new material that covered various social issues. This year again CAC ventured into the communities to work alongside the Slum Soccer coaches and were thrilled to see that the organization and coaches had already reached out to many young girls in the community. It is important that these young girls can also learn from strong female coaches and that is certainly something that Slum Soccer provides.

I can understand why Slum Soccer is moving forward in so many positive ways because I was lucky to have spent time with Abhijeet and his father, the founders behind this great organization. I could tell whenever I was around Abhijeet that he was thinking of the next steps for his organization and always questioning how the organization could improve, how the coaches could get more resources and how Slum Soccer could reach more children using sport as a mechanism to address larger societal issues. With their new blog, I look forward to reading more about their program and learning from them as leaders in the field of sport for social development. 

We are immensely pleased to announce that Slum Soccer has been awarded the prestigious FICCI India Sports Award for the “Best NGO Promoting Sports” category for the year 2013. FICCI, or the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, is the largest and oldest business organisation in India. It is non-governmental and not-for-profit.

FICCI has been conducting these awards for 3 years now. It is a big boost for Slum Soccer to get the award, which not only recognises our work as an NGO, but acknowledges our efforts to promote football in the country.

The chairman of our umbrella organisation, Krida Vikas Sansthan, and our mentor Mr. Vijay Barse were also present at the awards. Long-term volunteer Akshay Madhavan collected the award from Sanjay Paul (VP Tata Steel) in front of a packed hall at the FICCI headquarters in New Delhi.

The same night, our main sponsor ONGC was presented with the “Best Company Promoting Sports” award, giving us another reason to cheer. The FICCI accolade is a huge recognition of Slum Soccer’s efforts and is a big motivation for us to build further on the work that we have done for society and football in India.

• Understanding of the role of coach as a community leader/role model
• Understanding of the rules of Homeless World Cup, Street Soccer
• Understanding of how coaching sessions can be used to include educational messages.
• Ability to implement varied, organised and effective training sessions, including warm ups, cool downs
• Ability to reflect on and evaluate the programme and own coaching skills

In addition to this the participants were given an additional 2 day training course on delivering the Slum Soccer Football Plus training sessions. Another highlight of the program was that there were almost equal number of women and men participants in the total batch of 25. In a country, where football is not the biggest of the sports, such initiatives do not only encourage football but also help the lesser-privileged participants in making a career choice.

This time round will be the 11th edition of such the tournament. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is sending in their team, and in total more than 16 teams are already in contention for the much acclaimed crown- the best slum soccer teams in the whole of India.

Even the mountain state of Sikkim has sent in a team to take part in the tournament; and it will be a proud moment for them and for Slum Soccer as well, we will be breaking new ground geographically speaking

The boys and girls and children are enrolled in the programme will be given a chance to play the game they love and in the process will be taught other aspects of life that they are completely unaware of.

This naturally veered towards the need of the hour – for every person to know everything about the extremely debilitating Aids/HIV which inexorably results in severely affecting the physical health of the person affected, and also is a social stigma so nobody talks about it. This is almost like ostrich burying its head in the sand to avoid being killed. Blacking out a pressing issue like AIDS or HIV is not going to help the society in any way. Instead it should be brought out in the open, discussed and the ignorant have to be educated, so they become aware of the imminent danger and arm themselves with the knowledge of how to prevent it.

Slum soccer has broken new ground in creating this total awareness among its cadres, by conducting tournaments where Awareness of Aids is the central theme, so that what is socially taboo, is no longer so.

This Aids Awareness tournament, the first of its path breaking kind, is going to be held by the Slum Soccer on December 1^st, 2012, when 16 teams made of participants of our programme will be taking part. There will be counselling where the players can take part and learn how to be safe and protect themselves. After all, prevention is definitely better than cure. There will be workshops conducted towards this purpose, medication and pamphlets detailing preventive measures will be handed out and the matches will be played with the aim to propagate the imminent dangers of this silent killer disease.

This needed a lot of learning on the part of the coaches themselves so they can impart a wider awareness in the players, not just for the game but for a new way of life too. The boys and girls and children who chose to enroll for the training were in need of getting educated on various aspects of life, like personal hygiene, tolerance in coexistence, a keen knowledge of the life threatening Aids/HIV menace which can arm them with how to avoid or combat the same, respect and equality for women in the society etc.

All this was possible with the coaches going through training sessions under other senior coaches from abroad who came over to work with them with a view to inculcating the importance of the all round development of each and every team player, under the CAC scheme.

What throws the light on the entire operation is the ability of the Indian coaches to imbibe the importance of making the game of soccer for the poor as a tool for overall betterment of the society. They have carved a niche for themselves in fashioning world class soccer teams out of a rag a tag wannabes.

The coaches who came from abroad worked with the youth leaders in Nagpur and created this unique group of men who not only coached the game but helped the players to become these complete individuals too who were ready to take on the challenges not only on the field but in their personal lives also, who developed values, respect for women, a complete awareness of health risks vis a vis, Aids/HIV.

In a way, these coaches have themselves become such exemplary citizens as they lead from the front, and the players follow them.