Mumbai Coach Uses Football to Keep 14,000 Kids in School

When Ashok Rathod invited 18 boys from his Mumbai slum to play football one Saturday in 2006, he had no idea he was launching a movement. He just knew that too many of his childhood friends had dropped out of school to work at the nearby Sassoon Docks, and he wanted to offer a different path.

The college student made one simple rule: if you want to play football, you have to go to school. To his surprise, all 18 boys showed up that first Saturday at Oval Maidan.

Some kids initially refused to play with teammates from different castes or religions. Ashok grouped them together anyway and created a new rule: when someone scores, the whole team celebrates, or the goal doesn't count. Within a year, those divisions disappeared.

The boys started bringing friends. By 2010, Ashok was coaching 300 children, funding everything himself until he won the CNN-IBN Real Hero Award. He used the prize money to rent a 24-hour community center in Ambedkar Nagar that still operates today.

Govind Rathod was one of those original 18 boys. He had dropped out at 12 to work construction and in a canteen. When Ashok's no-school rule kicked in, Govind was so hooked on football that he convinced his parents to let him return to Mumbai. He sold newspapers at traffic signals and cleaned toilets to pay his school fees, all so he could keep playing.

Getting corporate funding proved tricky at first. Companies wanted proof of existing sponsors before committing. So when some Taj Hotel employees visited his training session, Ashok snapped photos with them. He showed those photos to IDBI Bank, who assumed Taj was already sponsoring him and agreed to help. Then he showed IDBI's support to Kotak Bank, and they joined too.

In 2010, Ashok officially registered the Oscar Foundation, naming it after the Academy Awards because he wanted something "magnificent and aspirational." The acronym stands for Organisation for Social Change, Awareness and Responsibility.

The Ripple Effect

The program now reaches beyond just keeping kids in school. Girls receive coaching in football alongside education about menstruation and health. Children learn discipline, teamwork, and shed the casual use of bad language that was common in their neighborhoods.

The football sessions became a gateway to life skills that extended far beyond the field. Former dropouts found not just a sport, but a community that believed in their potential.

Today, 14,000 children have passed through Oscar Foundation's programs. What started as one young man trying to help 18 neighborhood kids has become a blueprint for using sports to break cycles of poverty and educational abandonment.