Oscar Wilde once said, “Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians.”
While the sport is truly for barbarians played by gentlemen, there is a lot of strategy and planning that goes behind the game. Although Oscar Wilde punned about the game, he definitely had an idea about the toughness of the game. Else, why would he use the word ‘barbarians’?
However, Rugby was not popular in the Indian subcontinent until the recent times. It was always thought as a game that involved a lot of physical activities which will lead to injuries and hence people shied away from the sport.
Enter Khelo Rugby.
Khelo Rugby is a movement mooted to inspire kids from the disadvantaged communities to help them become ‘Citizens of Reckon’ leveraging Rugby as a means to the end. Jungle Crows—the parent company of Khelo Rugby drives this movement by adopting children from the socially backward communities to inspire them to participate and learn the game of Rugby. Apart from the game, Khelo Rugby also teaches these kids about Team Work, Leadership and above all provide them with Self Esteem and boost their Confidence level.
We at Zamstars have been inspired by the great work by Khelo Rugby & Jungle Crows and hence we have vowed to contribute to their movement as part of our CSR Initiatives.
As part of this CSR initiative, a select group of Zamstars employees is taking part in the mentorship program for the children from ‘Khelo Rugby’. This ‘mentorship’ program is designed to empower the Khelo Rugby kids with “Life Skills” or “Employable Skills”.
With this pretext, both Khelo Rugby Leadership and Zamstars Leadership jotted down the Interests levels of the children and identified 4 areas of Mentorship—Art and Drawing, Photography, Writing and Computer Skills. Four children were Identified from Khelo Community of Bangalore and four employees of Zamstars volunteered to form the mentorship team.
Every week these children visit the Zamstars Office and the mentors spend 1 to 1.5 hours with each of them covering the subject they chose to learn. The mentorship is for 3 months and at the end of 3 months both the Khelo Leadership and Zamstars Leadership will evaluate the children on their learning curve and draft a plan for the future.
The mentorship program kicked-off on the 1st Dec 2016 in the areas of storytelling, drawing, sketching, photography and computer. From what it seems the children from Khelo Rugby are really enjoying coming to our office and spending time with their Mentors to learn a few skills.
We at Zamstars thank the Khelo Rugby Leadership and the Jungle Crows team for giving us this opportunity to contribute to a noble cause.
In the coming days, we will be posting more pictures and videos to showcase the development of these children in the skills they chose to learn. So, stay tuned!
