Bhopal: Roshni and Sapna didn’t want to stay at the hostel at Barkhedahasan of Sehore district when they were given admission in Kasturba Gandhi Girls School in class 5. Three years later they have emerged as gold medallist in national open school championship in Karate.
The story doesn’t stop with these two girls. There are scores of other examples like Palak from Rehti (Sehore), Pinki Singh and Shakuntala from Sohagpur (Shahdol) and Sajni Markam (Chhindwara) who won laurels in sports at national and international level.
There are also examples like Vandana Prajapati who got selected in NEET, Nitu Singh selected for BE and others who were selected in professional courses. The common thread in all these success stories is a scheme called Sports for Education started by school education department in collaboration with the UNICEF.
The scheme was started in 2012 with an objective to increase attendance of girls in schools besides encouraging them to improve in academics. “Sports promote inclusion, breaks social and gender barriers. Sports promote positive school environment and conducive teacher child relationship,” says the coffee table book released by UNICEF.
“It was taken care that local traditional games like kho-kho, Kabaddi, seven stones (sitolia) remain part of the programme as children associate more with these local games,” said Irene Cynthia, director of Rajya Shiksha Kendra, explaining about the project.
Several girls have qualified in engineering, medical and other professional courses. Others have made a successful career as a teacher, aganwadi worker and starting their own ventures, added Cynthia. The programme was introduced in 207 Kasturba Gandhi Girls Schools across the state and in more than 500 schools of five districts including Morena, Narsinghpur, Betul, Chhindwara and Dewas.
Later about 325 girls hostels were added in the programme. At present Sports for Education is run in more than 1000 schools across the state. UNICEF provides training to teachers and assistant wardens of hostels besides providing sports kit to selected schools.
Students are engaged in local games in the beginning and then trained in sports like Karate and athletics later. The aim of this programme is not to convert the students into sportsperson but to use games in increasing concentration in studies. The result is that several girls have done extremely well in sports at state and national level while others have made good careers.
