Community Sports Program

Children from marginalized and underprivileged communities in India are often lacking in their social and emotional development due to inadequacies in their educational experience and structures, as well as lack of exposure opportunities. Due to lack of access to opportunities and services, these children face greater hurdles in dealing effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life, decreasing their chances of enrolling in higher education and/or gaining meaningful employment in the future.

The Community Sports Program (CSP) is a structured multi-sports program targeting girls and boys aged 5-16 from low-income families living in the slum areas of Bhubaneswar – the capital of the eastern-Indian state of Odisha.The program, delivered in mixed-gender groups, utilizes a specially designed goal-oriented and age-appropriate multi-sports curriculum, in order to improve the health and well-being as well as social and emotional development of children by teaching them various soft skills and values. Moreover, the program helps break gender stereotypes by changing the attitudes of these children towards those of the opposite gender.

Along with a structured sports-based program delivered by trained coaches, the CSP provides these children with personal sports kits, sports equipment as well as supports their schools with multi-sport infrastructure and sport competition to enable their sustainable participation in sport.

The CSP empowers young people to become confident and competent leaders within their own communities by developing their soft skills, imbibing sporting values and changing attitudes towards other genders. The CSP's outcomes are as follows:

Connect

• Adolescent boys and girls regularly participate in sport and physical activity
• Adolescent boys and girls understand the value of sports in improving their health and well-being

Improve

• Adolescent girls and boys develop soft skills, sporting values and change their attitudes towards other genders
• Community stakeholders understand the benefits of sports participation on adolescents

Transform

• Adolescent boys and girls are empowered to act as leaders in their communities
• Adolescent boys and girls articulate life choices and make decisions concerning their life