Description
Magic Bus Sport for Development is a not-for-profit organisation in India that believes in the child's right to play (declared by UN). Magic Bus uses sport as a medium to work on overall child development enabling girls and boys to realise their true potential. Since its inception, the organisation has reached out to over 18,000 children living in some of the most at-risk and marginalised circumstances in the world and taking them on a journey of self-discovery through their childhood.
Magic Bus delivers a sport for development programme and is creating curricula and a Monitoring & Evaluation tool to enhance programme efficiency and effectiveness that will enable scalability of the programme across India. Magic Bus delivers its programmes by working in partnership with communities, NGO's, institutions and government schools. Through sport and adventure based learning, personal and social skills are developed that will enable children and youth to assert their rights and bridge the social divide. The programme aims at advocating a child's right to play, promoting gender equality/equity, bringing communities together through sporting activities, empowering children and youth and building a socially and financially sustainable programme.
The community project, supported by the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, is focused on the children from the slums in Dharavi. Dharavi, Asia's largest slum, is a heart-shaped settlement in central Mumbai. Spread over an area of 1.75 km2, it is a bustling series of settlements, each with its own identity. Dharavi is home to over a million people with a population density of 17,000 per sq km. The community is diverse and has many small sub-communities of different class, caste and religion. Each area has people from different backgrounds and customs. Children attending the sessions are usually a mixture of two or more communities, which presents a challenge to manage the sensitivities of each community.
Magic Bus creates 'classrooms without walls' for children, using football, outdoor activities and indigenous games to promote personal and social development. Through activity based learning issues of gender equality, health and hygiene, reducing communal tensions, antisocial behaviour and the appeal of crime are subtlety addressed. Alongside the city-based sports programme each child is taken out on day trips and camps and given the opportunity to experience adventure sports such as rock climbing, rope courses, obstacle courses and outdoor initiative and problem solving games. These activities are designed to ensure personal development by placing children in challenging environments which require physical effort and teamwork.
Magic Bus aims to empower communities to take ownership of the Magic Bus programme with children and youth being the primary promoters to affecting a social change within their communities.
As part of its expansion plans, Magic Bus will be sharing its expertise, and working to develop Sport for Development capacity, with government teachers, sports coaches and NGO personnel across selected urban and rural locations in India.
