All you need is a ball!
Breaking the myth about Football for Development.
When I started to work in the social sector, my views were of a sports evangelist, making claims like “Unlike other sports, you just need a ball to play football”. However, my experience working at the grassroots with underprivileged children has changed my views on Sports development work, particularly football.
Before I take you on a journey of how I had a shift in my thinking, it is important to understand first, why I fell in love with the beautiful game in the first place.
My liking for football started during my college days when I had an opportunity to play on beautiful well-maintained ground. The game gave me a sense of belonging and I made lifelong friends. Even after completing college, and working in the IT sector, I continued playing the game. Living in the densely packed city of Bangalore, we had to do an hourly booking for the futsal playground.
So, it was obvious that when I switched to the social sector, I wanted to work in sports and use football to work with children. However, reality struck me hard, when I realized how difficult it was to find a playground to conduct sessions for children.
While as a student and IT professional, I took the availability of ground to be for granted, it was difficult to find playgrounds for low-income children. The low-income families occupied more densely packed spaces in the cities and it was difficult to even find public amenities like a park. Even if it was available and we started conducting sessions, the residents would object saying it was dangerous. The ball did hit a few of them!
Another privilege that I took for granted was travelling. Living in Bangalore, I travelled 7-8 know to play football on my Activa. However, travelling is not easy for underprivileged children. A great example is when a government school teacher told me:
“There was one boy in my class. I was ready to pay a monthly fee of Rs. 1000 so that he could learn taekwondo. The boy’s family just had to take him to the venue but they couldn’t even do that. They don’t care about children”
Her heart was in the right place, but her views were biased because the boy’s parents (often the case for most people living in low-income communities) do hard labour work for long hours and are not available at home most of the time.
I realized similar problems existed in semi-urban and rural places also. Managing a girls’ football program in Bihar for six months, I noticed that even if the ground was available, it was not levelled to safely engage children in a game of football.
Apart from the challenge of ground availability and mobility of children to reach the ground, I realized that football is also expensive. You required gear such as boots, shin guards, clothes (t-shirts and shorts), and football to even start playing the game. May be not that expensive for middle-class city dwellers like us, but for programs running on low budgets, it was expensive.
After 4 years, I realized that I have to find alternatives as my goal was not to teach children football but provide them access to team sports and the several benefits it offers.
You may have heard about the famous Standford University case study where they were trying to find a solution for malnutrition in children in Vietnam and all they had to was look at the local children who were healthy. The mothers were feeding local crabs with rice to the children. They used the solution from the community to solve the problem of malnutrition. We have to do the same in sports.
The local games played by children are adapted to the limitations of the communities. Games like Kabaddi, Kho-kho, Gedi, Fugdi, and defensive cricket don’t require much space, equipment, outfits and sometimes not even a ball! However, these games by themselves can bring out the already existing problem in the communities like the exclusivity of girls. The games have to be adapted to promote safety and inclusivity like fortification of local food with vitamins and minerals.
The challenge with local recreational games is that it is not popular and doesn't attract CSR and international funders like football. The reason, football has gained much popularity even in the social sector is because of its commercial value. The number of fans in India watching the English Premier League is increasing every year which means increasing revenue for the league in terms of broadcasting rights, advertisement and t-shirt sells. This is the reason that clubs in the Premier League support social football programs in India.
NBA tried to do the same by partnering with Reliance India to spread and increase participation in basketball. The game could be played on courts which are far out of reach of underprivileged children. Children who took the benefits of such programs already had the privilege to do so. It was not about solving a problem but about long-term economic value! It was heartbreaking to see millions of rupees getting invested in unsustainable plans.
Working in the social sector, we have to look beyond our love for the game. Football helped me but it is not a solution to the massive problem we are facing in providing access to fun, safe and inclusive sports for children.
I am making my peace with it! How about you?
Note*:
I want to point out that my experience has been working in the state of Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh in both urban and rural places. My views and opinion are based on these experiences and I cannot generalize that all states in India face similar challenges. In many states in India like Kerala, Goa and Northeast, the local spaces in the communities may incline children towards playing the game of football.
However, if you are a middle-class person living in these states or any other state in India, please go and explore what the underprivileged children are playing. It may or not be football.