In the congested lanes of Ambedkar Nagar in south Mumbai, football once meant a plastic bottle stuffed with sand. For young Ashok Rathod, it also meant escape from his immediate surroundings. “Many of my friends dropped out of school early, some became poorly paid labour, others drawn on to the wrong path,” he recalls. “My father insisted I stay in school. That changed everything.”
It was this insistence, and perhaps Rathod’s ability to see football as more than just a sport, that led him to found OSCAR Foundation—Organisation for Social Change, Awareness and Responsibility, an initiative that pairs the discipline of sport with the promise of education, encouraging underprivileged children to join schools while helping them build focus and find a community of football lovers. What once started as a small effort now reaches more than 35,000 children and youth across Mumbai, Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Daman.
Ashok began when he was 18, coaxing neighbourhood children onto a makeshift pitch. “I saw the way they lit up when they played football,” he says. “It gave them freedom, focus, and above all, they had fun, and I had the chance to talk to them about school.” He set a rule that became the foundation of his life’s work: no school, no football.
School attendance among OSCAR children is consistently above 92 per cent, with a 91 per cent pass rate in 10th standard and 95 per cent in 12th. “Football teaches discipline, teamwork, and problem-solving,” Rathod says. “We began with local engagement, building trust with families, running small football and education sessions.”
Young people from the same communities now lead many of these sessions. “Youth from underserved communities, including previous OSCAR participants, are identified and trained to work with our children,” Ashok notes, adding that over 1,000 young leaders have been trained since 2010.
Empowering girls to challenge societal norms and educating them about their capabilities is one of the proudest achievements for Rathod. Parents who once hesitated now watch their daughters score goals alongside boys.
Inclusion goes further through a disability inclusion programme aimed at supporting children with disabilities to participate in football and life skills sessions in a safe environment, reaching children with hearing, speech, and visual impairments and learning challenges.
It is not funding or facilities that drive the foundation, but credibility. “Our approach has always been to engage families directly, showing them how education and sport can create real opportunities for their children. Over time, this has helped us build strong trust, which is now one of our greatest strengths,” he says.
In Daman, OSCAR works with government schools to deliver football and life skills sessions to more than 5,500 children, with plans to impact over 5,000 more. “Our hope is to shift the way India views sport: not only as a path to professional careers, but as a means to teach discipline, gender equality, and leadership.” Rathod says. This year, 14,986 children were reached across four states and maintained a strong 40 per cent gender ratio.
As evening settles over Ambedkar Nagar, many of the coaches guiding the children now were once the participants who learnt the sport here. “Football gave me purpose,” Ashok reflects. “Now it’s giving thousands of children the chance to imagine a future they never thought possible.”
