Umoya Sports is an initiative under The Umoya Foundation, a non-profit based out of Delhi NCR, India. We believe that sports benefits everyone, equally with a Right to Play and we are building equal sports opportunities for all students althletes, irrespective of their abilities, sex or age.
Umoya Sports works towards providing holistic development to People with Disabilities by equipping them with skills to lead an enriching life through ‘Joy of Sports’, and building an ‘Inclusive Sports Culture’ in schools.
In the last three years, the organisation has touched the lives of more than 1,250 students from eight different schools including Khushboo Welfare Society, Action for Autism, Amar Jyoti School, Eka Education Trust and Ashish Center.
We all believe that ‘SPORTS’ is a great tool for development.
Challenges that you faced when you started doing this work?
- Lack of quality programs providing holistic development and skill development
- Lack of social skills because of denial of participation due to social stigma and misconceptions towards Students with Disabilities Study (SwD)
- Lack of trained adaptive physical education coaches or mentors
- No physical education leading to health problems
- Center for Workforce Development (CwD) have less expectations from the parents, teachers
- Have less exposure to show the own ability to society.
Aditya also added; we have a small but energetic team which helps the organization to grow. Lokesh (A national Level Sportsperson) and Dikshita (National Yoga Athlete) who work closely with me.
Program you are offering to the schools/students:
Joy of Play- During School Program
In-school ‘JoP’ program instruction: ‘JoP’ program is an annual 36-week program, 3 terms of 12 weeks each. We conduct ‘Joy of Play’ during the school hours, weekly 6-10 hours of program in each partner school depending upon the school requirement and schedule availability. JoP Consist of Three Elements Body Management , Sport Skills And Social Skills. Within each school, we have created a time table schedule for all students and divided them into groups, as per their skills and age. Depending upon their level, we personalize the training for that group by changing the rigor and intensity of the training. Each training session lasts 40-minutes, with a maximum of 15 students with disabilities to maintain high individual attention.
Ability Spark – an At-Home Play and Wellbeing Program!
Ability Spark is an ‘inclusive digital physical education program‘ for ALL children (whether disabled or non-disabled) with the focus on developing overall physical and mental well-being through yoga and fun outcome-based sports and physical education activities. We aim to ensure that all children continue to engage in relevant, age, and skill-appropriate play and fitness activities from their homes. Our life-skills and foundation academic skills mapped play program ensure that the fun and learning continues during these times!
Here we create a Masqat ‘SPARK’ for making the program more intresting for the children.
Spark plays a different role to teach the student how to play. Spark plays the role of a friend, coach, or guide to create a real connection of his fantasy world. Spark helps us increase a child’s participation in our program.
You mentioned ‘Buddy System’ how it helps students?
We aim to build inclusion and create a change in the mindset of people by promoting awareness about disabilities through sports. Sports is a great way to break barriers and enables building friendships. We are using sports as a tool to build inclusion at schools, to create a mindset change in students by building ‘Buddy system’. In the Buddy system, each special needs child will be paired by a student without a disability and they will participate in sports activities together. This will create an opportunity for mainstream students/ buddies to know about disabilities and at the same time build life skills among them importantly empathy. We conduct inclusive sports events and competitions for children with special needs to build sportsman spirit and exposure. We have observed these opportunities build confidence among students with disabilities to interact with mainstream students, preparing them for creating pathways of opportunities and mainstream with the society.
One story of change?
Bittoo, one of our special athlete studying in our partner school Khushboo was very shy at the beginning and was hesitant to participate in sports. Over a period of only 2 months, now he not only loves to play football, waits eagerly for the sports sessions but also has improved his cognitive skills and surprised us by solving one side of the rubrics cube. He is aiming to solve the whole cube now.
Recognition from the industry?
- InnovatED
- Beyond Sports Awards
- Zero Project Shortlist
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