Summary:

Sportz Village Foundation, supported by DXC Technology, rolled-out 'Race Around India': A uniquely designed, offline (non-digital) gamified intervention to engage children and adolescents in structured physical activity in their homes and communities - to keep them active and healthy through the outbreak. The program is structured as a 'race' between teams that compete with each other by completing activities, such as sprinting, skipping, and cycling.

Problem Statement:

Due to the ongoing pandemic, lack of physical activity has impacted the physical and emotional health of children across the country. Further, increasing inequities caused by the digital divide - specifically among children in government schools and other rural communities in India - are making it difficult for children to access high-quality content (and learning experience) in areas such as sports/ physical education.

Project Need:

To engage children from disadvantaged communities - with no/ minimal digital access - through an offline sports education intervention to help them stay active and healthy during/ after the outbreak.

Implementation:

Race Around India is a gamified sports education program - to build engagement and health & fitness of children - through non-digital/ offline tools such as workbooks. The objective of the game is to go around India in sprints, skips, jumps, and many other simple yet interesting physical exercises. There are 15 city races starting in each module and teams complete these

individual races one after another. 4 teams of 10 children each play the game and it takes about 40-45 days to finish with each team trying to finish 1st in each of the individual races. The team with the maximum number of cumulative points at the end of the 15th race wins the overall race. The game details are mentioned in the workbook and each child receives his/her respective team color workbook before the start of the game. During the course of the game, each child fills the workbook with all the progress. The workbook also contains Trivia regarding the cities, their culture, language, food, history, etc., and City Race Activity Points (AP) and Activity Chart.

• Improve physical fitness
• Improve life skills
• Improve cultural and geographical knowledge about India (General Knowledge)
• Social engagement.