The Football Match
“We thought people might say this is just a match, but we knew in our hearts this is much more than that. This is an opportunity for these kids to step out of the mundane…”
Being a father is one of my greatest pleasures and my son Zayden is also my best friend with whom I love doing crazy things. As someone who simply enjoys being a father, it hurts me immensely to see children separated from their parents. Unfortunately there are many such kids in India and there are a multitude of reasons which we will not go into here.
Fortunately we have organizations such as Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT). SBT operates 18 centers (13 contact points and 5 shelters home) providing full time and short stay facility to children in need of care and protection. The awesome people at SBT are doing all they can to provide these kids a home, a sense of security, education, life skills and most importantly hope. I’ve been involved with this organization on and off over the years and even sponsored a girl for some time who I am very proud to say is on the verge of becoming a stewardess with a top airline in India. During our visits to India I’ve always taken the opportunity to take Zayden to the shelter homes to see first hand how privileged he is and experience how a little bit of hope and compassion and yes, money can go a long way in transforming hundreds of lives.
Zayden is crazy about football (soccer) and both of us love sports in general. When we realized kids at SBT don’t have regular access to organized sports, we decided to do something about it. After debating a few options, we decided to organize a football (soccer) match between the various shelter homes SBT runs. We thought people might say this is just a match, but we knew in our hearts this is much more than that. This is an opportunity for these kids to step out of the mundane, forget any worries they might have, play in a proper field with proper balls for the first time and create memories for a long time. More importantly if all goes as planned we’ll have a football coach from one of the leading football academies in India watch the kids play and if he sees potential, offer scholarship for up to 2 boys, which as you can imagine will be truly life changing. This will also fulfill Zayden’s desire to referee a full 90 minute, 11 a side football match which I was unable to organize as I had no clue how to gather 22 boys at the same time and place in Toronto.
Like most well intentioned things this required money. While I was going to contribute money and time, I needed more people to chip in to make this an awesome experience for the kids. My wife had a great idea - reach out to friends and family. I did so immediately and within forty-eight hours received more than I needed. I cannot thank my friends and family enough as without them this would not have been possible.
The match was a great success! 35 boys from SBT came to the match in the most positively infectious spirit despite it feeling like 39C (102F) and them having to walk 2 kms in the heat due to some issues with their bus driver. While we painted the boys’ faces blue and red to identify which team they were on, they painted the town and field red regardless of the team they were on. The boys had been practising to sharpen their skills for a week before the match and it showed but what amazed us was the caliber of a few boys who it seemed were taking coaching for a long time even though that was not the case.
As was our hope this turned out to be more than a one time match. A coach from a leading football academy came and offered a scholarship for football coaching to one of the boys and selected another boy for a further trial that if all goes well will also result in a scholarship. The boy who was offered scholarship was also selected as the man of the match and received football cleats/shoes - again thanks to contributions from friends and family.
Zayden had an awesome time too. He played the role of a referee to the T - with a whistle and yellow/red cards, booking 3 players, disallowing a goal because of hand ball earlier in the play, awarding a penalty but most importantly maintaining the flow of the game despite some language challenges.
I Don’t Know if one match can change many lives or even one for ever, but what I do know is it made a dent and created a possibility for something larger and longer term for at least 1 or 2 boys and this counts for something.
Until next post!!!