Sport for Change

SportzVillage Foundation (SVF) uses Sport to drive change in schools by impacting the health, education outcomes and empowerment of children and adolescents. SVF programs are scientifically researched, highly tested – and are integrated into the core education process and curriculum of the schools. 

EduSports offers a high quality, sports education program to children and adolescents to expand their learning levels and individual capacities. Children, that have been part of our structured sports program in the schools system, have experienced following clear outcomes in our work (and research) over past one decade:

1. Education – improved educational outcomes through better classroom behaviour and enhanced cognitive competence. 

Supporting Evidence: Ongoing engagement with sport & physical activity has helped reduce the school drop-out rates, and improved academic performance/ achievement in students

2. Empowerment & Livelihood – improved social-emotional learnings (with a special focus on girl child), and job related skills required for employability.

Supporting Evidence: Ongoing engagement with sport & physical activity has helped  increase social competence, positive self-image, and reduced deviant/ delinquent behaviour in students

3. Health – improved fitness levels, and enhanced understanding of the relationship between physical activity and their overall health & well-being.

Supporting Evidence: Ongoing engagement with sport & physical activity has helped reduce instances of non-communicable diseases, mental health issues and unhealthy behaviours in students.

Special features of the Product

The key components of our ‘Sport for Change’ platform are:

• Highly tested and proven engagement models for government school children in urban, semi-urban and rural areas
• Proven ability and experience to scale the program over a larger cluster of schools in different parts of the country
• Integrates into the core curriculum of the school for long term impact
• Assessments that link health & fitness levels with educational and behavorial outcomes in children
• Capacity building of communities (Youth) for sustaining the program after the intervention
• Add-on module of talent identitication and development of atheletes/ sports persons on top of the baseline line sports education program
• Technology led program monitoring, reporting and impact evaluation

Name of the Project: Road to School

Name of the Partner: Ashok Leyland

In 2015, Ashok Leyland in association with the Government of Tamil Nadu, Department of Education decided to work in the area of improving primary and middle school education in government schools in and around their manufacturing units in Tamil Nadu. Dubbed the ‘Road to School’ project, Ashok Leyland decided to invest its CSR funds in holistic child development programs in schools in these areas. The schools were carefully chosen in areas where experienced and capable staff was unavailable. The schools were also selected from areas where there were low literacy rates, acute teacher shortage, lack of proper infrastructure, & where the families were from migratory and economically weaker populations. Detailed studies indicated that more than half the children from these schools did not have minimum learning skills for their age. This resulted in large differences in academic ability in children of the same grade. 

Currently over 150 government schools in Krishnagiri, Thiruvallur and Namakkal districts of Tamil Nadu are part of this program. In addition to the goal of improving the academic performance of these children the project also had goals to improve their health, hygiene and physical fitness and introduced supplementary programs for the same.

To improve the health and fitness of these children Ashok Leyland tied up with EduSports to introduce a structured sports curriculum with the help of age appropriate props in 106 schools in Krishnagiri&Thiruvallur districts in the year 2017-18.

EduSports is India’s first and largest school sports organization working with over 800 schools including across 250 locations and covering 5, 00,000 children. EduSports programs are run in private schools as well as in government schools either with the support of state governments or corporates. The project was kicked off in August 2017. The EduSports curriculum was implemented thought the existing resources and government school staff with training and support from EduSports.

EduSports conducted a 3-day comprehensive training for the existing school staff on the EduSports curriculum. Select government school staff was also included in the training. The training included both on-ground and theory sessions. EduSports also provided the props and equipment for conducting the program. ‘Enablers’ were nominated from EduSports who acted as mentors and helped in program execution. The enablers conducted fortnightly visits to each school. During each visit the enablers conducted reflection meetings with the government school staff. The reflection meeting’s agenda included refresher trainings, feedback on program execution & addressing concerns.

The program has been successful with impressive improvements in the fitness of the children and also improvements in in-class behavior and class engagement. The implementation of the EduSports program has now been extended to 50 additional schools under the “Road to school’ program in Namakkal districts as well in 2018. The total number of students covered now is close to 20,000 spread across more than 150 schools. The number of schools for the year 2019-20 is 380 impacting more than 30,000 students. 

Special features of the project

1. Our sports education intervention runs on top of an existing program focussed on academics/ slow-learners run by another partner – and helps enhance the overall educational outcomes at a far lower incremental investment
2. We use technology based program monitoring & evaluation, which is helping the program to scale