CHENNAI: Under-17 World football begins next month, and while it make sports enthusiasts around the world ecstatic, two people are busy working on teaching life skills through the sport in Chennai. Meet Vikas Plakkot and Neha Sahu, who launched Just for Kicks, a vocational programme for kids in government-run schools and also low income private schools.
“I was working in a school in Pune when I realised that these kids just learn academics and nothing else. That’s when I pitched the idea of having sports as part of the curriculum and TFI accepted this. This was successful and hence I launched JFK in Chennai,” says Vikas.
JFK’s journey began in 2011 when Neha was working in Mumbai, and Vikas was in Pune. Over the years, they introduced their programme in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. “We started this as a crowdfunded project and got a good response. Now we have applied for grants and are part of various corporate social responsibility activities that help us generate income. But the crowdfunding is still on for our well wishers,” he says.
They launched the programme in Chennai a few months back, where they laid the groundwork, partnered with schools, held trials, hired teachers and did the reccee. As of now, JFK has four schools under its belt — Kannammapet Government High School, Government Primary School, Thiruvanmiyur, Government Middle School, MMDA-1 , and Anjuman Matriculation Higher Secondary School.
“In Pune, I saw that students don’t engage with each other beyond their community or their friends group. That changed after we introduced them to sports,” he adds. It wasn’t a conscious decision to teach only football to kids. “At that point, we looked at a cost effective game, and we chose football. All we needed was a ground, a ball and few cones. But as we were football fans and also started researching on this sport, we stuck to this. We don’t plan on introducing other sports as yet. We would like to establish ourselves all over the country before moving on to a new sport,” shares Vikas.
JFK looks to enter the eco-system of the school and they partner with the management. “We create three groups of boys and girls in each school, and train them. They are pitted against each other at national level tournaments that we conduct between November and February,” he points out adding that the next tournament will be held in February 2018. The team also provides kids with sneakers, and other sport equipment. “We strictly teach inside the school. Size of the filed is not an issue for us. If the school has no ground, then we rent it out from a nearby school,” he adds.
Considering that Chennai is still conservative when it comes to girls playing football, Vikas and his team did face a few challenges. “Some schools did not want to send their girls for the game as they wished they would rather do something else, but we could see the kids were interested. It is the elders’ mindset that needs to change,” he avers.
Concurs Santosh Nanduru, city lead, Chennai, Just For Kicks, adds, “We want equal number of boys and girls in this programme. Sadly, we just have 42-45% girls in the programme. It’s one of the reason why we make it a point to meet parents and share success storiess.”
City schools that have launched this programme are seeing a positive response. “Students are keen on coming for practice every morning and they stay back for classes,” shares an elated Anand Murali, a teacher at Kannammapet Government School.
The management of Anjuman Matriculation School is also happy with the programme. “We joined hands with Just For Kicks and have opted for teaching only boys. We will slowly introduce the programme to girls too,” he says.
For details, call 8374396802 and to donate visit https://justforkicks.ketto.org/fundraiser/justforkicks