Subhankar's online fundraiser for Sports | Milaap
The Right Pitch Season 2! -a Teach For India initiative. Inspiring young minds through cri-cket.
  • Subhankar

    Created by

    Subhankar Paul


Teach for India is an organisation that believes in giving all children an excellent education. I'm pursuing my fellowship with them, at a school in Govandi, Mumbai, called Ja'fari English High School. I teach Social Science to 138 children of Standard 9. My students come from a community where violence is high. They come from a community where there is a lot of gender discrimination. They have no exposure to the world outside Govandi.
I thought about how I could try to change this. I thought about what made me who I am today. The answer was very simple- sports. Students can embody and showcase the values of Grit, Teamwork and Respect through sports

There are very few constructive things that our kids have been doing on their own- one of them is playing cricket. Thus, to polish this inherent talent and to give it a new dimension of competitive spirit is why we have-
THE RIGHT PITCH!   Season 2

Just to give you an example of how it promoted values and mindsets, access and exposure in my class:-

I received a text from one of my students Kasim after a practice session last year which goes like this- "Hi Sir, please can you give me feedback on my batting and bowling. Strengths and weakness. What I have to learn and what I'm good at. How is my captaincy? Am I good enough to come in the final playing team? Please tell me all this very clearly."
Also values like team-work, hard-work, grit, respect and self-control got re-iterated again and again through the entire duration of training and the tournament.
Since, the tournament has mixed gender teams, it empowered my girls a lot. Last year one of my girls, Shofiya was the captain and another one, Taskin opened the batting.

This would be the second edition for the tournament and we plan to conduct training sessions by professional coaches this time. And if we manage to source funds, we also have plans to take the kids to Ranji and Kanga league matches, where they can watch domestic players in List A matches.

So, getting to details:

WHY: 

All TFI teachers try to develop skills in their kids which could help those kids become better. For once, there is an opportunity to do something that THE KIDS want to do.
And more importantly, so that our students can embody and showcase the values of Grit, Teamwork and Respect through sports.
Kids warming up before a match
WHAT:
A Cricket tournament with league matches being played leading to quarters, semis and finals for all TFI schools across Mumbai.
Team Restrictions:-
  • Each team will consist of 11 players
    • 8 playing members - with minimum 2 boys and 2 girls
    • 3 substitutes - with minimum 1 boy and 1 girl
There will be three categories of teams:
Junior- Grades 4 and 5
Senior- Grades 6 and 7
Super Senior- Grades 8 and 9

Girls at par with boysTime: 6th February 2016 - 7th March 2016


Read More

Know someone in need of funds? Refer to us
support