Organisation:
Bridges of Sports Foundation
Location:
Bangalore, Karnataka
Problem:
Sports other than cricket have been a neglected career option in India. One of the reasons is lack of professionals/ coach which is a perquisite for a sport person. In terms of numbers India has an annual shortage of 40,000 physical education teachers and over 30,000 sports coaches. The demand for support personnel (trainers, psychologists, nutritionists) will be around 80,000 for each in 2022. During the William.J Clinton fellowship Mr. Nitish Chiniwar spent 4 months with My Angels Academy which teaches football to slum children in Delhi, and from this pivotal experience he learnt the shortage of physical trainers in school and need to bridge the gap between demand and supply. To overcome this, Nitish founded Bridges of Sports Foundation which has ‘Sports Development Programme’. Under this programme, fellows are trained during 10 months period and further they join the partners of foundation and continue to work as coach.
Solution:
Mr. Nitish Chiniwar, a motorsport engineer, found that there is huge market gap in sports industry as in terms of numbers in India, and has an annual shortage of 40,000 physical education teachers and over 30,000 coaches. Collectively there is need to bridge the gap of 2 million sports and sports related jobs. Therefore, he initiated the ‘Sport Development Programme’ under which they started training fellows to be coach with partners. 70% of these fellows come from tribal area of Karnataka, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh. They have identified and are working among 35 partners to be able to provide the livelihood opportunities for the fellows. Among them, is Akshaya Patra, their first set of fellows have already been provided livelihood through football program. The innovative part of the service is through ensuring livelihood through all our coaches, they are able sustain grassroots sports training of children in the tribal regions of India at 99 INR/month/child.
Scalability and Impact:
They are currently working in Karnataka, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh and are training more than 2000 children through this model. They have achieved 100% livelihood creation for all fellows. Now they are developing an online platform through which the fellows can be monitored and developed through remote learning. This will enable us to further reduce unit cost, and to scale and reach out to more geographies.
Financial Requirements:
Financial
Scaling up
Awards and Recognition:
Recognised by Tata Institute of Social Sciences and NSDC as India’s top 6 social ventures.
India’s 2nd largest crowd funded organisation as part of Book6million smiles challenge.
Recognised by N/Core as India’s top 20 non-profits