Gully goalee keeps kids in
school
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When Ashok Rathod was in Class V,
he watched his friends drop out of school to work at Sasoon Docks, earn their
first hundred rupees and spend it on cigarettes. “We sailed through the first
four years of school because they couldn’t fail us according to government
mandate even though we could barely write our names,” says Rathod, who who
grew up in Ambedkar Nagar, a slum in Cuffe Parade, and attended a BMC-run
school at Colaba.
“One could easily earn Rs200 per day. Then when we didn’t know how to spend it, we turned to alcohol and cigarettes. Soon parents would get concerned and get the kid married at 17 so that he took up some responsibility,” explains Rathod as he draws a circle in the mud with his finger. He was the captain of his gully cricket team. But by the time he graduated, his friends had traded sports for gambling. At age 23, most of his batchmates have two children and they still work at the docks. In 2006, he started the Oscar Foundation that guides slum children in life lessons through football. “I wanted to break that cycle and use sport as a way to keep slum children occupied after school hours. It teaches them team work, helps concentration and we even got a tutor to help them with their homework,” says Rathod who functions out of a tiny office space in the slum. Today, he coaches 300 children in Mumbai aged between 7 and 22 years; 35 are girls. They practice daily, play at tournaments across the country and the only criterion to be on the team is that you must attend school. In June, Rathod will travel to Brazil where he has been invited by the corporate social responsibility (CSR) wing of FIFA. |
Yolande D’Mello DNA130505
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