Community Cricket Program 2026

Appeal for funding!

Our intervention with the current cohort of the Community Cricket Program (CCP) will conclude in December 2025. Pro Sport Development (PSD) and The Upamanyu Mallik Initiatives (TUMI) aim to sustain the CCP’s on-ground activities and extend its implementation. For 2025-26, we plan to engage 75 young people (50% girls) from marginalized slum communities in Bhubaneswar, and we need your help to make this possible!

The CCP will enable these young people to access their fundamental right to play and empower them as confident, competent and socially-aware young leaders, who can confront gender norms and advocate for child rights within their schools and communities. In addition to participating in a purposefully designed cricket-based program delivered by trained facilitators, the CCP will provide these young people with personal cricket kits and equipment during sessions, and access to exposure opportunities and tournaments to promote their learning through play.

To continue this impactful initiative in Bhubaneswar, we aim to raise ₹ 9 lakhs to cover the program’s running cost and ensure that these young people can benefit from its impact.

This is how you can contribute to the program:

Context 

Odisha is one of India’s poorest states, with 30% of its population multidimensionally poor. Bhubaneswar, Odisha’s capital city, has a population of 36% living in 436 slum pockets. Most of the slum dwellers in Bhubaneswar are low-skilled and/ or daily wage workers, earning an estimated monthly family income of ₹6,667.

Young people living in Bhubaneswar’s slums face inadequacies in their education. The community schools they attend lack the infrastructure, funding or expertise to deliver holistic educational services that provide experiential learning to build confidence and develop life skills. These deficiencies mean that young people possess limited confidence, capacities and resilience to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life, hence decreasing their chances of enrolling in higher education and gaining meaningful employment in the future.

Against this backdrop, girls and young women in Bhubaneswar’s slums face formidable obstacles due to prevalent gender-based discrimination and inequality, leading to their vulnerability to violence and exclusion, including at all levels of their education in Odisha, with a female dropout rate of 25.2% at the secondary school level. The prevalence of gender disparity in Bhubaneswar’s slums also manifests into public health and wellbeing concerns, negatively impacting girls and women, with research identifying one-fifth of girls as “developmentally vulnerable, having poor adaptive and cognitive functioning”.

About the Community Cricket Program

Since 2022, PSD and TUMI have been implementing the Community Cricket Program (CCP) in the city of Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The CCP engages young people aged 12-16 years from Bhubaneswar’s slum communities in order to capacitate them as socially-aware leaders and changemakers within their schools and communities. The CCP is a structured, mixed-gender intervention using cricket to hone young people’s life skills, develop their leadership capabilities, and raise their awareness on issues of gender and child rights.

Impact

To date, the CCP has worked with 125 young people (48% girls) from Bhubaneswar’s underserved slum communities. The program has a tremendous impact on young people’s lives within and beyond the cricket ground. It has increased their interest and engagement in sport and physical activity, particularly cricket. Young people have also noticed improvements in their physical and mental fitness due to the program. Additionally, young people have reported developing leadership abilities and life skills, such as focus, self-esteem, teamwork, and communication. Furthermore, the program has fostered positive relationships among peers of different genders. Lastly, the CCP has enhanced young people’s awareness on pertinent issues of gender and child rights.

Stories of change

Click on the following links to read more:

• Sajia Khatun - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bXmtdyHEbvevvzrVYBb1g037lXOo1stn/view  
• Omm Sai Das - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dc4P0N0cG7tfgq6uqNtpdSvxaoc033Fx/view