Kick like a girl tour arrives
Our pupils have enjoyed the opportunity to raise funds this year to provide a life changing football tour for an U17 team of 15 girls from the Indian slums. Our pupils are dedicated to hosting a life changing education and football tour and have held a series of fundraising events throughout the year including a Rough Sleeping Challenge, a 180-mile staff run and a Soul Music Concert. To date, we have raised £7, 095, well over the initial £5,000 target.
OSCAR’s U17 team will immerse themselves in Bradfield culture from Monday 8 – Wednesday 10 October as they work alongside our pupils during lessons and take part in a female empowerment workshop. The following day, the girls will be put through their paces during a training session run by QPR Ladies’ Football Club before taking on Bradfield’s Girls’ 1stXI in a match in the afternoon.
Headmaster Dr Christopher Stevens says, “We are honoured to be welcoming this very special touring party. May they enjoy a fabulous tour and touch the lives of all those they meet.”
The OSCAR Foundation, a not for profit organisation based in Mumbai, uses football as the tool to encourage underprivileged girls and boys to go to school. Of the 4,000 children in the OSCAR family, remarkably 1,400 are girls. OSCAR has one simple rule, ‘No school, No football.’
In slum communities, uneducated parents do not allow their daughters to go to school. Instead, they are made to cook and clean to learn the necessary skills for an illegally early marriage. Youth pregnancies are common. OSCAR aims to stop this cycle by educating and empowering the girls to change their community’s mindset. OSCAR gives them back their future.
OSCAR founder, Ashok Rathod, who set up the foundation aged 18 to serve his own community says the football tour represents “a major step forward not just for OSCAR but for India too. The 2017 boys’ tour proved that exposure to UK culture made an enormously positive impact. With the support of the UK schools we know we can do this.”
The girls are the first members of their families to own a passport and travel and it is some achievement to have secured passports, UK visas and funding. The support of the British Deputy High Commission in Mumbai, Steppes Travel, six leading Independent UK schools, including Bradfield College, and the involvement of an estimated 4,000 pupils in the UK has made this possible.
“The children selected for the OSCAR tour come from very poor uneducated families”, says Tour Organiser, Lucinda Sowerbutts. “Some of the girls have very harrowing personal stories and they live in basic houses with no running water or bathroom. There are 100 toilets for 60,000 people. They lead very tough lives. This opportunity is a lifeline. Working in the community, I can see for myself the positive impact. The host schools will learn and benefit as much as the OSCAR team. Everyone’s a winner.”
More updates and details of the tour will be posted on the Just Giving fundraising page and our Twitter page.
