Khelo NETBALL!!
by Zaffar Khan, currently in Kolkata
With Khelo Rugby bringing such great results bringing so many communities together and uplifting them we thought we would like to do something new, something fresh, something for the girls especially. We always believe in stretching ourselves and challenging our limits and capabilities and so we thought of taking up a game which was a bit out of our skill range but of course for a better cause and goal. So we have taken up the Netball challenge!
This definitely meant we needed some professional help and that's where The Netball Development Trust (NDT) come in. Their team led by founder Monica landed landed in Kolkata on Friday and got to work on Saturday with a first Coach the Coach session with a group of 20 Jungle Crows boys and girls. We are very excited that they are supporting the Jungle Crows Foundation in introducing the sport of netball to the kids we work with and also to some new schools in Kolkata and our new hunting ground, Siliguri.
We're starting out with mixed netball but we'll look longer term to provide opportunities to play and compete just for girls. We now have a two week coaching programme to come and it will be divided between Kolkata and Siliguri. We already have four schools and two communities signed up in Kolkata and four schools in Siliguri.
Our very own Mitra one of our coaches participating in the coaching session who is also a very handy rugby player said, “I like the sport, I have just spent an hour trying to learn it and looks good. We sometimes play rugby-netball so we know some of the basics but there are quite a few rules to learn. It's great we have an all girls sport now“.
Khelo Netball is looking forward to encouraging take up of the sport and seeing how we can use netball within our community programmes. Netball like our tag rugby is a very safe and generally non-contact sport and hence to gives us the bridge to take it forward with boys and girls playing together and delivering it in areas without good facilities and grounds.
We are very excited to get netball started and we're sure that we'll find some twinkling new Netball stars in the future.