Sport and SDGs case study: Umoya Sports
How does your organisation work toward achieving the SDGs?
UMOYA Sports works towards providing holistic development to people with disabilities through ‘joy of sports’ by equipping them with skills to lead an enriching life and develop equal sports opportunities for them.
Our flagship programme, Joy of Play, is a skill appropriate, year-long, during-school sports programme curated for students with intellectual disabilities and special needs.
We use sports as a tool to build a platform of inclusion and provide exposure to our special athletes by combining children without disabilities in our programme and hosting inclusive sports festivals in partnership with big ticket sports events such as FIFA U17 World Cup India and Delhi Dynamos F.C, a professional football club in India.
Which specific goals do you target?
Umoya Sports specifically works towards achieving SDG 4 - Quality education and SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities.
Currently in India, 46% of disabled people are uneducated, 39% drop out from school and a huge 63% of them are unemployed majorly due to lack of opportunities.
We aim to solve this crisis by providing equal sports programmes at the grassroot level. Our high quality, progressive sports programme integrates academic learning outcomes and builds skills for PwD to provide a holistic development. We hone the sports skills of PwD and create alternate pathways for livelihood for disabled.
What changes have you made to your work since the SDGs were introduced in January 2016?
I have always been sensitive about the socio-economic disparities and worked towards empowering people. I left my corporate life to work as a teacher in under-resourced NGO school in 2012. The SDG goals reinforced my belief in working towards bringing change, motivating me to use sports as a tool for development. In December 2016, I again quit my corporate job and started Umoya Sports to provide equal sports and education opportunities for students and adults with disabilities in India. Since 2017, we have impacted close to 250 children with disabilities.
How is your organisation measuring progress?
We have devised a rubric system to measure the improvements in students on 3 broad parameters:
- Body Management - Motor skills, Stamina, Coordination
- Sports skills - Ball control, passing, shooting
- Social skills - Teamwork, confidence, joy
We also have created questionnaires for school teachers to measure the academic improvements, behaviour management.
We conduct first pivot test at beginning of year and another end of year test to measure the progress.
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