Taking sports to the classroom

In their constant effort to promote sports in the country, 'Sports: A way of life' has created new alphabets both in Hindi (Khel Praveshika) and English (Know Sports) for the toddlers. In the next step of this mission, these basic books for kids were launched at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi.

Unlike other book launch programmes, where celebrities are called in, this Khel Praveshika was launched by children from orphanage and slums. Speaking on the occasion, president of 'Sports: A way of life', Kanishka Pandey said, "In the first step of our sports literacy mission, we have tried to sensitize parents from both urban and rural areas as I strongly believe that parents are the first teacher of every child. I have sent an appeal to almost 40,000 parents, whose children are studying in government schools."

The organisation has now started a movement to let the schools set in a norm where sports are given more importance during admissions as there is a vast population which are bereft of any sports knowledge and several of them don't even know the name of various sports. Khel Praveshika (in Hindi) and Know sports in English, is an attempt to find a solution to this problem. Kanishka believes that the foundation of sports has to be laid down at an early age.

"Ghaziabad district is our pilot district for this project of spreading sports literacy among all segments of society and we have set an ambitious goal to make Ghaziabad a 100 percent sports literate city in the country. We intend to let all schools of Ghaziabad have access to these basic books for students till class fifth," said Kanishka.

"We are governed by the philosophy that 'sports does not discriminate' and to spread this message across the society we have picked up students from various groups i.e. from a convent and government school to an orphanage and today these small children are our guests. Through this we want sports to be taken up by every segment of society," he further added. Minister of state for basic education with independent charges in Uttar Pradesh government, Anupama Jaiswal, praised Kanishka for his effort as she said, "His effort will lay the foundation for sports in India." She also said that this Praveshika and Know Sports will be taken to every school in Uttar Pradesh.