First Impressions

My Project KHEL journey started in early November of 2018. By the way my development sector is started way back some years ago and my higher education is also associated with ‘social work’. But then again, my understanding related to this sector are changed a lot from that time. At first it was in the mind that as soon as we went to the ‘field’ all the change will get started but all things changed from that time. From changing ourselves, how to act that the effort to develop understanding continues. This is the type of sector where there is lot of reason for being happy emerge out promptly, sometimes the sense of not doing anything meaningful is also discouraging.

I have giving a lot of credit for this to Gandhi fellowship, which has developed a little sense of social sector, where I spent the latest two years and learned a lot about myself and this development sector. While working with schools and children there, I felt very deep that children become active at the time of any activity, and there is not much need to put force on the participation of everyone. Children are always ready to participate in all the activity and stay connected for the entire time. But I just don’t understand that how I will connect games and sports to learnings. At that time, I collected information from here and there and experimented with them. But the result was not much encouraging. There were several reasons behind this, as the experiments were not in one stream, children enjoyed the process, but the learning did not develop as much.

At the same time, I came to know about Project KHEL, how an organization is awakening the lives of children aged between 9-18 years by delivering 21st century life skills through sports in Lucknow district of Uttar Pradesh. I am basically from Uttar Pradesh and I have also a keen interest in sports, so after the completion of fellowship and after many months wandering, my curiosity pulled me towards the Project Khel. Now I am working with Project Khel from more than a month and in these months, I have seen how my experiments can be arranged in a systematic way. I also understand that how the sports will be a powerful medium, to show right direction to learning. In this one month, I have tried to understand that how sport will be the powerful medium for the holistic development of a child. It was also good to see that how bookish theories are translated on a ground level and the ability of children to learn is being developed with both the seriousness and the fun.

It’s always fun to work with the children but it is also quite challenging. It is not always easy to satisfy them with the answers which they are continuously raising enquiries and to match with their energies. For this, we should always to be energetic and keep updated. In all these processes, there is a lot of support from the ‘team’ on how to deal with these situations and maintain the morale. I have also tried to share my immature experience with the team. Here I am constantly getting the chance to meet some new sports myself, which I have never experienced before. Altogether, I am experiencing a new and creative environment here.