Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: The Karuna Football Foundation formed to promote football, has been working relentlessly in Goa and gave a new dimension to the underprivileged girls by starting the first National Residential Girls Football Academy on the National Sports Day of India at the Holy Rosary Convent High School, Nuvem.
The Academy was inaugurated by V. M. Prabhudesai, Executive Director, Sports Authority of Goa, Brahmanand Sankhwalkar Goa Football Development Council Chairman and Arjuna Awardee, Mr Savio Madeira, All India Football Federation, National Technical Director and a host of Goan Football stalwarts.
The Foundation first aim was at promoting physical activities, especially girls playing football in rural Goa. They imagined seeing girls running across open fields chasing a ball, scoring goals, and loudly cheering. It’s different in cities but not in villages because girls don’t play much, although GFDC has worked hard. The girls certainly don’t play as much as boys in Goa. Just to complement and supplement the Goa Football Association and the Government efforts of promoting the beautiful game, the foundation has stepped forward to take it to the marginalized and underprivileged girls from orphanages, streets and slums.
The Compassion Football Academy genesis goes back to over the last decade of commitment, and they have been participating in the Goa Football Association League in various age-group tournaments for the past many years, initially with boys, but they also started with girls and women in the Vedanta Women’s Football League Championship held in February – March 2021.
The girls in the Academy have been carefully selected by well-known scouts working with the underprivileged and marginalized communities. Five girls from Manipur, three girls from Tamil Nadu, one girl from Kerala and Maharashtra and 14 girls from Goa.
The Academy is providing talented girls from economically backward backgrounds with an all-around education. It has been selected based on merit, and the Academy aims to help build understanding and appreciation across different cultures and sectors of society so they have developed it to be at a national level.
The girls will gain experience working with and building consensus amongst people of diverse backgrounds because they are to be trained in life skills and vocational training for jobs in the future. Nation-building training like NCC and other activities is also conceptualized in this program so that girls are ready to take up jobs in the Defence forces, police Department, etc.
The Academy that houses the 24 girls with coaches on the campus is being supervised by the Apostolic Carmel sisters, which is ample assurance for the parents regarding the quality of work that the foundation has designed to promote among the learning and growth of the girls. The girls will participate in a range of engaging and challenging activities that promote self-discipline, build confidence and expand their abilities.
For doing all this, the foundation has a very experienced person as to its Technical Director in Heidi Scheunemann, a UEFA licensed coach from Germany who has been working for the last two and a half decades in Indonesia in similar communities and who has produced several national level players for the Indonesian women’s team. She is being supported as staff at the Academy by Mario Aguiar as the head coach, the Goalkeeper coach for the Indian National Team during the under 17 Boys FIFA World Cup held in 2017 in India. There is also former India Captain Maria Rebello and FIFA Women’s Referee and now assessor as a part of the coaching team. Also, the team has been joined by Naomi Vase from Pune, who was earlier with the Dempo Sports Club.
The girls at the Academy are from families who are struggling, especially during this Covid pandemic, because of the loss of jobs of their parents and have been at the centre since the 15th August for now over two weeks undergoing their academics at the Holy Rosary School and training for football presently at the SVD grounds in Raia.
The Academy has been working under the guidance of Savio Madeira, the Indian National Technical Director of the All India Football Federation and has expressed satisfaction with the venture in the way it is progressing.
The foundation has been involved in organizing several football events for children from orphanages, streets, and slums not only in Goa but also in different parts of India, and their flagship event is the Compassion National Championship with different states participating with the last event held on 26 – 27th November 2019 at the Panchayat Ground, Chicalim organized in collaboration with the St. Francis Xavier’s Church, Chicalim.
There have been several challenges being faced by the new Academy, and yet are hoping that corporates would come forward to support the foundation in light of the success achieved to buy the Indian Women’s hockey team at Tokyo, which mainly comprises women from marginalized communities.
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