My experiences on setting up a makeshift basketball hoop in an abandoned parking
-Pradyut Voleti
The last two years have been hard for most of us, especially those of us working in the impact sector. We were presented with unique challenges with respect to our programmes and our children. At the same time, it pushed us to be resilient and innovative, pushing us to remember over and again why we started to do what we love so much.
This was an incident that happened right before the pandemic overtook our lives. Due to some logistical issues with one of our school partners, we had to give up our basketball court on which we conducted all our evening programmes. This court was used to train around 500 children in high-quality basketball. Most of them touched the basketball for the first time here. The loss of their beloved court along with the lockdown was a heavy blow to all our kids. To give some context, imagine for three to four years, you spend every single evening of yours playing a sport that you fell in love with. It enables you to forget the difficulties at home or school, to celebrate the values of hard work, creativity and collaborative success, and most of all, to dream bigger. Suddenly, that gets taken away from you. Most of our kids lived in a 150 square feet house with not enough space to do basic functional exercises.
One day as I was going back home from the village, I saw this empty concrete parking space adjoining a park and wondered what if we could put up a basic hoop in this area for the children. Our team set up a basketball hoop on two bamboo sticks and a basic board. All I wanted was a safe space for our children to play the sport they love so much. Within a couple of months, more and more children from the village started coming and today, over 200 children play in this small concrete space. My team and I frequent this space three to four times a week now to enable these children to develop at a holistic level through basketball.
Here are a few things I learned from this experience:
- Less is more: All it required for me to ensure that 200+ children in the area pursued an active lifestyle was two bamboo sticks, a board and a metal ring. Many times, we lose ourselves in our inability to procure adequate resources or infrastructure to drive sustainable and scalable impact. I let myself take that first step and allowed it to snowball with no expectations. Today, my team and I learn a lot more from this small project.
- Impact is infectious: Not too long after we started seeing the increase in the number of children who play in this space, we started getting support from the local community to sustain this. Recently, the Pradhan of the area installed lights in this space to enable the children to practice basketball well into the evening.
- Growth despite challenges: Despite the lack of a proper court with the lines or sturdy boards, our children made the best out of the situation. They continue to impress us every day when they figure out their own drills and games in a way to include all of them in the area. We have seen children taking up roles of mentors, coaches, and even siblings for their peers.
- Supporting future talent: In India, most cricket and football stars grew up playing their favourite sports in their neighbourhoods and gullies. Inadequate access to basketball courts is also the primary reason for the lack of popularity of other sports (such as basketball) in our country. By providing more opportunities to play sports, we get closer to our Olympic dream. We at Dribble Academy have facilitated world-class talents to come out of Gejha and we are affirmative that the next talent will be found in these empty spaces with a hoop, a basketball, and a dream.
Today, we continue to engage our kids for their basketball and holistic development through mostly online sessions. We had to adapt over and over again to continue our impact and our children motivate us on a daily basis. We do not know how and when will things get back to normalcy. But our kids at DAF taught us resilience has a weird way of getting us where we want to be – in the game and in life.