A summer of sports in Chennai
Our team in Chennai has been pretty active this summer, organizing activities so that young people and children could experience life to the fullest.
 First, they organized a month of sports camps, where boys from slum communities received professional football, cricket and volleyball coaching. Just to make it harder on themselves, the team got up extra early every morning to prepare snacks and milk for the boys.
For further inspiration the team took more than 150 of the boys from the cricket camps to watch the Chennai Super Kings play a match in the IPL cricket series. To the boys’ excitement, Mhakaya Ntini, Muralitharan and MS Dhoni came over to chat and sign autographs (famous cricketers if you’re not a fan.)
Read about the sports camps here.*
Then they organized a record attempt on the relay-marathon, set by Oasis UK earlier in the year. More than 100 boys turned up to play their part. See photos here.
As if breaking a record wasn’t enough for one day, they invited some top guests, including Kanimozhi, a member of parliament, to an evening of awards, speeches and performances. The press were out in force to hear Kanimozhi give her speech. Read what journalists from 'The Hindu' had to say about it here
All this is not the end! Before the summer we were running football coaching in two communities and giving some of the boys tuition to help them pass their 10th Standard exams. Read more about that here
Building on the success of the summer, we will develop some junior teams. These boys will receive after-school tuition and we will also work with their families. And we will continue to develop our senior teams, helping them play for leagues and giving them exam tuition. We also help them find jobs.
Becky Swamickan, who heads up Oasis in Chennai, says, ‘Being able to sustain the action is our challenge now. Now that these boys have had the opportunity to be part of something B-I-G, they will never settle for anything less!’
* This article first appeared in our magazine Inclusion. If you live in India and would like to receive Inclusion, click here and sign up.
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