Report from the field: Game 2 – Football at TATA city

‘Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man; for sooner or later the man who win is the man who thinks he can.’ – Tata Football Academy brochure

Click here for Game 2 pics

From tea to ten-tonne trucks, Tata is everywhere in India. It is the iconic Indian company. Yet for a 100 year-old giant, Tata is surprisingly young at heart. Take the family of five off the 100cc motorcycle and put them in a real car for two thousand dollars? They can do that. Few people thought the Nano was really possible, but for the Tatas like Adidas, impossible is nothing.

For the Tatas, ‘Sport is a way of life’. Even Tata Steel’s chief of corporate sustainability services, Mr Satish Pillai, is a former international athlete who represented India at the Asian Games in athletics. So when the our friends at Tata Steel offered to sponsor a week-long training for twenty-five girls from Yuwa’s teams at India’s top football academy (theirs), we thought what better place for Game 2?

It was a big event for us, our three coaches, and our girls, but also for Tata. Yuwa was the first girls team they had ever hosted – and from the kitchen staff to the head coaches, they did it with all the class you would expect of a century-old company.

However, as Franz mentioned in the last up-date, getting thirty of us down to Jamshedpur hours before a maoist strike closing the state's roads wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.

The plan was to leave Sunday, so I was going to take Saturday say goodbye to my friends in Ranchi. After two years in the city, I had finished my post working for survivors and children vulnerable to human trafficking, and wanted to thank everybody who had helped me along the way. But the announcement of a moaist strike threatening to violently disrupt any travel put a stop to my party plans.

The strike marked the beginning of a new episode in my life. After first gauging the threat (very real) of travelling on Sunday with Franz's team and Rahul Singh (head of CII's Jharkhand office) who had helped us to organize the training, we came to the unfortunate decision we would have to leave after the three-day strike, and cut short the training camp. Then we changed our minds and decided to try to leave that very day. We had all worked too hard for this, and the girls were hugely disappointed to have their time at training camp cut in half.

I started packing and distributing a few last sweets (Indian tradition) to my saati’s (friends). In the meantime Franz, Helena (Yuwa's program director) and her husband tried to organise transportation for the girls from Ranchi to Jamshedpur, but sunset the girls where still waiting with their luggage on top their heads in the village. Most buses were out of service due to the upcoming strike, and three SUVs that had confirmed never showed up.

In a final attempt, I went to the bus station and somehow found a lone bus, destination: TATA. I was biting my nails as the bus company threatened to sell the thirty seats I reserved. Meanwhile, Franz was chasing down four auto-rickshaws for the girls along the highway near Hutup, 20 km away. At the last possible minute, they appeared in the station.

By this time it was dark. The girls and coaches boarded the bus, and drove off in a cloud of dust, with Rahul following in his car. Franz and I rode off to get my bike and said a final farewell to our Ranchi crew (Mark, Rachel and Mahesh).

So the first leg of our journey was at night, hours before a maoist strike, on an unfamiliar road amid trucks having at least one light working if we are lucky. Arriving at Jamshedpur was for us a great victory.

That feeling stayed with us that whole week, even after the excitement of having avoided the strike faded away.

For the girls it was something beyond amazing. None of the girls had been away from home so far for so long. The first day Franz spent a couple of hours teaching the girls to tie their shoe laces and to wash their hands with soap before eating. I enjoyed watching their excitement at this adventure and the luxury of three full meals a day – and not having to cook anything themselves.

After a day of getting used to their temporary dormitory in JRD Tata Stadium, they started their training at Tata Football academy (TFA).

The first thing I noticed was that the coaches are genuinely interested in the talents of the girls. I could see that it naturally brought the best out of the girls without knowing it themselves. Coach Vijay Kumar commented one morning that he believes the most important thing is that the girls have fun – ‘you can’t do anything by force’. It might be common sense for us in the West, but living in India for two years it felt as if I heard a revolutionary speaking. In the most places I visited in India girls are bossed around and nobody asks themselves how that might feel or if the girls want to do what they commanded to do.

The girls' work on the field was rewarded with great cultural programs, and the girls took trips in the brand new TFA bus to a tribal dance competition, the zoo and a laser light show, where they danced in the stands. To understand the experience of the girls I compared the town that orbits on the gravity of TATA to a trip to Disneyland.

For us, the solid relationships we established during the training camp is promising for the future. Satish Pillai, who is chief of TFA and Corporate Sustainability Services at TATA Steel Limited, said to us, “Nothing brings a community together like sports.” Together we discussed how to promote football as a tool for development. The first steps in 2010 will be 1) residential training camps for Yuwa girls at TFA, 2) special trainings for Yuwa coaches at TFA, and 3) fielding a girls team by the Jamshedpur Football Association.

After the closing ceremonies on Saturday, we said a sad goodbye to the girls and coaches. The girls gave us a high five and wished us good luck on the trip – not completely realising where we are going to and what for. Heading off towards Kolkata by bike I wondered what their parents would have to cope with when their girls came home from the camp.

After dark we stopped in Karagpur, West Bengal for a good night's sleep. Stay tuned for the next blog post.