One Thousand Hockey Legs: An Indian NGO project creating hockey culture in schools

One Thousand Hockey Legs is an innovative Indian NGO project which is creating hockey culture in schools of India and utilising the sport of hockey to transform lives of underprivileged children.

Field hockey is one of the pure amateur, gender-balanced sports which in a country like India evoke passion among its billion population. In 2008, NGO, Hockey Citizen Group was founded by hockey historian and author, K. Arumugam, who left his job to promote hockey. He introduced an innovative project called One Thousand Hockey Legs (OTHL) to create a hockey culture at grassroots level, especially in educational institutions where once hockey was a prime activity.

OTHL aims to introduce the sport of hockey to at least 500 children in schools in each city or district of India. Needs based and closely monitored and measured, OTHL provides free equipment and coaching to schools which normally accommodate children from the socially and economically deprived sections of society.

Arumugam spends most of his time in these schools mentoring the underprivileged kids for whom hockey has given a new lease of life. OTHL offers avenues for both recreation and career progression for hundreds of underprivileged kids, creating in the process tournament opportunities and personality development. In the last seven years, OTHL has introduced hockey in about 90 schools spanning across five cities namely Puducherry, Kolkata, Chennai, Kanpur and Delhi. OTHL provides not only playing kits and sportswear to kids in the schools, but also improves school playing grounds. Many of OTHL's raw and new talents are routinely taken into the leading schools with free education for their sports teams with full scholarship.