India: Slum Soccer
What is the aim of your program?
KVSN (Slum Soccer) exists to offer opportunities and motivation to slum dwelling, disadvantaged and homeless children and young adults. We use football as a tool for social improvement, increased self worth and education, whilst providing a platform for all players to demonstrate and improve their level of performance in sports as well as education.
This year we aim build on our ongoing and successful programs, while at the same time expanding Slum Soccer’s reach to new sites within Nagpur and the surrounding area with a view to providing a blueprint to be replicated across India. We hope to dramatically increase the number and the level of our coaching programs by concentrating on Coach Education which will enable us to develop coaches from within our own organization and provide a structured development path for our players. This will enable us to create, run and then evaluate and improve more programs across India than ever before. The players from our very first projects are now ready to progress to become coaches and we want them to meet that challenge. We see this as an evolution of our project.
How many coaches/volunteers work for your program? How many coaches/volunteers will you be able to have attend a coaches across continents partnership program? NB. There must be male and female coaches
We have 22 coaches involved in our program which includes 10 female coaches, all of whom will be available for the program.
What social problems does your program address? (e.g. health, conflict etc)
We aim to tackle Homelessness, Alcohol and Substance Addiction, HIV/AIDS awareness, Life Skills Imparting, Women’s Empowerment and Health.
Tell us some of the things that you would do in a normal soccer education session with the children?
The coaches make a monthly activity plan which includes football skills as well social values that will be imparted to the participants. A typical session starts off with safety checks, warm-ups, skills & tactics lessons, games, cool down and is always followed with a discussion.
How many children take part in your program?
While the number is dynamic, at present about 650 children participate in our programs regularly.
