| After nearly 500,000 Kashmiri Hindus were forced to flee Kashmir in the shadow of violence, threats and targeted killings, they moved to Jammu. The “migrant camps” at Jagati, a 10-km drive from the city of Jammu was created and some migrants were provided one-room quartets at this camp. The condition in these camps is not what it should be and the communty is struggling haard to keep conditions healthy for their youth.
Rationale & Objectives:
Youth who engage with sports, generally don’t get into social evils and drug abuse. Though at a small scale, these challenges are becoming part of discourse about Jagti camp. So, we need to start, encourage and promote sports in Jagti for this reason and for other good reasons as well.
Bulk of the Jagti’s 20,000 population, represents those people, who have lived in Cramped Migrant Camps (Mishriwala, Purkhoo, Muthi, Batterbalian, Nagrota and other places ) of Jammu for two decades. Apart from privacy issues, the concept of spaces had also gone from mindscape and these people longed for a fresh breath of air. The children couldn’t dream of bigger play grounds and proper games and had reconciled to lack of sports infrastructure as a way of life.
However, the same generation after shifting from these camps to Jagti was greeted by landscaped green spaces as parks and open spaces, which lifted spirits of all these people across age groups. Along with this a large playground site was part of the infrastructure but the agencies didn’t fund it beyond a point and it never became a true playground with turf or facilities.
KP children and youth are second to none. Given opportunity, talents have come up and shined.
Ankita Raina , a high ranking national tennis sensation is one such example. We may have more talent in store and it is just a promotion away.
In Jagti Camp itself, several youth groups in small ways have been trying to get on their feet playing different sports as per their interest and availability of equipment and space and they need to be encouraged by way of providing sports gear, ground maintenance, coaching and competitions.
In this backdrop our NGO, Global Solace (Regd), has started some basic work to promote sports and encourage youth. Recently we provided sports goods to several youth in Jagti. But, this token encouragement needs to scale up. We want to make it bigger and purposeful.
For this we intend to continue to encourage and attract youth to various sports, provide them gear, sports accessories etc and in near future look at organizing small competitions to create excitement and involvement of youth in games.
We see this work both as a sports activity aimed at promoting good health, team spirit, discipline and talent exploration from our community as well as a means of weaning youth away from social evils and drug abuse.
Our team of patrons are spirited KP community workers and we have there blessings
Global Solace is patronised by three community stalwart members at present,namely Sh B L Bhat ,Sh Kiran Wattal, and Dr Chand Narayan Tickoo—all have contributed a lot for alleviating the suffering community as well as KP children in various camps.
It is not a first time that this idea is being bless by them. Almost 15 years ago Sh B L Bhat (then liaison person of KOA in India) took up the same matter with Sh Pran Koul CA who was coordinating then SAC program KOA and Sh Pran Koul was very kind and instrumental and he immediately raised funds for the purchase of sports items and accordingly dozens of sports items were distributed among the school children at Mishriwala Camp,Purkhoo Camp and Muthi Camp.
Preliminary proposal at this stage
We want to take it up as a project and if all goes well in the initial phase, expand it fr more impact.
Jagati camp in terms of sports infrastructure has one unfinished ground, which can’t be called a playground in present condition. However, these are small parks, which can be informally used for some group activities. So, essentially there is no sports facility including with the school.
The work therefore is two-pronged. One is creation of a sports facility and two, organizing youth into various sports of their interest. This will entail some liaison work with local government and advocacy.
Two, we need to create research based data and action plans and hold interactions with youth groups.
Both these activities will need a small project team, which apart from this will also get into discussions with various academies, coaches, sports bodies and also organize a few events and tournaments to generate the interest.
In phase two this can be extended to include recreational avenues for general population including for senior citizens so that their loneliness and other issues can be to an extent sorted out.
Also, once a community gets established around these activities, we can go for entertainment-based concerts and cultural nights. All this will add up to rejuvenation of our community bonding and motivation for youngsters.
Support our work
Your support and contribution will make our work easier and achieve a scale, which is necessary to build a momentum toward such a program of activity.
We would strive for an inbuilt transparency in the project by having website with repots and all donors will be regularly informed about the utilization.
Pintoo ji (President)
Avtar Nehru
(Secretary)
Sh.B L Bhat
(Patron )
Sh. Kiran Wattal
(Patron)
Dr. Chand Naryan Tickoo
(Patron)
|
