Nobody Ever Listened to Me - Chapter 8 'Play'

CHAPTER 8 - PLAY

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31 (1)
“State Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.”

There are few opportunities for recreation and play for children living in the slums. There are rarely any open spaces where children can congregate and play football or cricket or other ball games. The homes and shacks are so small and crowded that there is no room for a child to play. At best, if the slum has an electricity supply, even an illegal one, there may be a television set round which children will gather. In any case, most children in the slums, if they are not attending a school, spend their time in the alleyways searching for the opportunity to earn a few coins. Of course, children, even with no proper resources, can always invent their own amusement with the most primitive materials. Puddles of stagnant water after monsoon rains, discarded bits of metal, old tyres can all be brought into play. And of course, children react with each other, chanting ritual verses, singing, dancing, competing, fighting, swimming in dirty pools of water as the street children in the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ did with such verve.

In some slums, small non formal schools run by NGOs will provide an opportunity for recreation. Lessons will include drawing, singing, dancing. Visitors will usually be entertained with ‘party pieces’ the children have learned, popular songs, a poem, the re-creation of a folk myth in mime. And the children enjoy each other’s company and interaction with a sympathetic adult.

Children living on the streets of the cities of the world have more freedom, fewer restrictions and more scope, although the recreations they invent hold many risks as well as pleasures. These children can choose where they congregate - until some authoritarian figure moves them on - and they find the open spaces, parks and wide streets, derelict sites, and river banks, or sandy beaches. They gather in the markets, on railway platforms, under trees and sit in huddles gambling away their few accumulated coins. They spend the money they’ve somehow acquired, after filling their bellies, on a trip to the local cinema if they can afford it, to see a Western or a Bollywood epic and mimic the shoot outs and learn the popular songs of the moment. They hang around places of public access where there is a television that can be spied on, even if it’s only showing non-stop adverts. They find a rough patch of fairly level ground and purloin a makeshift football, or gather round a chalked wicket on a crumbling wall and thrash a battered tennis ball with an improvised bat, a remnant of wood levered off some ramshackle shed. They plunge into lakes and rivers, or the sea, fully clothed or naked. They just hang out together. They laugh, they cry, they comfort one another, they experiment with each other’s bodies. They inhale intoxicants, they smoke cigarettes, they have sex.

If an NGO wishes to engage with such children, as a first step in offering the child a different option, it has to provide some alternative draw. As well as the basic necessities of food, medicines for ailments, a wash and clean clothes, entertainment to attract the children is vital. Most shelters for such children will have a television, and often a computer on which games can be played by the children. Some will have educational toys or board games. In India a favourite is the Carrom Board, originally a gambling game - a cross between snooker, draughts and tiddly-winks! And the children will be encouraged to sing and act and dance, often as an informal means of basic education.

In children’s residential homes, there is scope for more active entertainment. Many NGOs develop the children’s artistic abilities; there is a stage for children to perform. For street children who have experienced rejection and whose self-respect is low, such opportunities rebuild confidence and the feeling of being of value. I have seen spectacular dancing and acrobatics in projects I have visited and seen comedies acted out, which I failed to understand because of the language barrier, while audiences of children rocked with laughter. I have seen exhibitions of drawings and paintings, some with great artistic flair, decorating the walls of the home. The children have the space and opportunity to join in team games, races, organised sports supervised by someone who curbs their excesses and ensures some order to give shape to the game.

In a few exceptional cases, the sporting skills of the children are more professionally developed. There is a street children home in Kolkata (Future Hope) where the Director is a sports enthusiast with a background himself of playing rugby at a high level. He has inspired some of his boys to form a youth rugby team that has swept away all competition in ‘sevens’ events and the like. After beating a police team in one final, the police sports trainer invited the NGO to send a couple of their older boys to coach their police youth team. The Director impressed upon the boys that they must conduct themselves appropriately in such company and was a little alarmed to see the two boys convulsed in laughter on their return. Somewhat apprehensively he enquired what had happened, and in between the giggles, they said, “They called us ‘Sir’! The police actually called us ‘Sir’!” That same home has encouraged other children to play tennis competently and several years ago two of the younger child potential stars were invited to sit in the royal box at Wimbledon and one of them tossed the coin for the Women’s Final. A more lasting outcome is that - at the latest update - ten former street children had graduated to be qualified as professional sports coaches in football, rugby and cricket.

Another NGO I’m acquainted with in Delhi (Butterflies) uses sport deliberately as part of their efforts to discourage drug taking, or to wean the children from the habit. They have formed football teams to take part in a local league and the children know that if they are under the influence of inhalants they will not be selected to play in the team.

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It is hard to imagine receiving daily beatings, and that your own mother would respond to almost any question with nothing but a slap and look of disgust. This is what 13 year old Paul endured before running away from home to the streets of Kampala. He survived on the streets the best way he could begging and sleeping rough, but often had to turn to drugs, petty crime and violence just to survive. The days rolled into months, and months into years, until it was two and a half years later and he had no education to speak of and a bleak future ahead of him.

When Retrak first encountered Paul in 2007 he was withdrawn and quiet, he distrusted adults and shied away from any type of help offered. Staff had no idea of the trauma he had experienced at home, or whilst living on the streets. Luckily, he had been introduced to Retrak by his fellow street friends who had told him about the weekly football matches. Paul loved sport and quickly took the opportunity to escape street life and just play with his friends. Over time Paul got to know the staff team who gained his trust and encouraged him to engage in a long term programme which would give him a real alternative to life on the streets. He started to attend the drop in centre on a regular basis, showed great promise in his catch up lessons and was eager to rebuild his life. However, despite having counselling Paul had no desire to return home or be resettled into his local community, instead he said that he wanted to stand on his own two feet and that Retrak had given him the confidence to pursue his studies and undertake vocational training.

Paul lived at the organisation’s hostel in Kampala and studied Electrical Installation. He impressed his teachers and industry mentors throughout his training and upon graduating obtained employment for a company in Entebbe. Vocational training equipped Paul with the skills and knowledge necessary to live happily and independently in society.
Paul, Uganda - Retrak
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In south India, a couple of State cricketers held a series of nets with 150 street children from a number of NGOs in the city. Famous sportsmen have taken a direct interest in street children and have participated with them - Steve Waugh, the former Australian cricket captain, took an ongoing involvement during an test tour in India and Saurav Ganguly, the former Indian test captain is closely associated with an NGO in Kolkata. There are well known footballers too, and Pele, who came from a humble background himself, has been a role model for Brazilian street youth.

The British Trust, Comic Relief, developed Sport Relief with the BBC and sent a team of celebrities to play cricket with tsunami affected children on the beaches of south east India, and then later played a match against Bollywood celebrities in the huge Bombay Stadium before thousands of children. But more importantly Andrew Flintoff, who was in India with the England Test team at the time, played alley cricket with children from an NGO in the back streets of Mumbai, and I’m told, was even cleaned bowled by one youngster, though to my disappointment the BBC failed to show that clip !

One of the NGO members of the Consortium for Street Children (The Amos Trust) organised a Street Children World Cup in Durban in 2010 to coincide with the Football World Cup in South Africa, and invited street children from NGOs in eight countries to send a national team of street children to compete. As well as providing opportunities and entertainment in sport for these selected few, there was a great opportunity to create worldwide awareness of street children and campaign for their rights. Incidentally - and surprisingly as it was not cricket - India won. But they do have more street children than any other country. Plans are now afoot to mount a larger event (involving street children from twenty countries) to take place in Brazil in 2014. This will also be accompanied by a street children conference and awareness raising campaigning media events.

Comic Relief, with their joint fundraising initiative, Sport Relief, has been researching the impact that sport can make in the rehabilitation of street children. The three year research programme in conjunction with projects from its grant-aided partners is nearing completion and full conclusions are not yet available, although some broad pointers have been drawn. Sport can be a valuable tool in the development of street children programmes where it is part of a broader agenda of change. It can help to engage and retain hard-to-reach groups of children. It can create a safe, structured space where these groups are able to build the relationships of trust they need to address their problems. And it can enable them to experience some of the specific physical and psychological health benefits associated with physical exercise. However, sport alone cannot address the complex problems faced by many disadvantaged children around the world.

Sport, where it involves regular physical activity, contributes to a range of physical and some psychological health benefits. To maximise these benefits for poor and disadvantaged children, programmes need to target specific groups, match participants’ skills to the activity and use local facilities to encourage long-term participation and strengthen the social side of sport. Sport is also a very strong ‘hook’ to attract children in to hear health messages, as with the ‘Butterflies’ example quoted earlier, but studies so far provide no robust evidence of actual change in behaviour. There is anecdotal evidence that the physical nature of sports can provide a useful entry point to discussions about sensitive health issues where the programmes are local and there are strong and positive relationships built between coaches and peers.

However, as yet there are no proven direct causal links between sport and reduction in crime, substance abuse or other anti-social behaviour. Sport can provide, however, many of the ‘protective factors’ that reduce the risk of youth engaging in those behaviours. These include close contact with caring adults, opportunities for positive group interaction, explicit training in team work and conflict resolution, provision of a ‘safe space’ to spend time, a voluntary and outreach approach that is local, based on participants’ identified needs and provides linkages to educational and employment opportunities.

There is some qualitative evidence that sport can have an impact on self-esteem and on children’s belief in their capacity to make decisions and carry out actions. There is little direct evidence so far to show that they are able to transfer confidence and skills learned in a sporting context to other areas of their lives. Sport has more effect here if it is part of wider programmes, encourages volunteering, matches activities to abilities and takes place in an inclusive environment that rewards effort and participation and accepts mistakes.

There is evidence that sport can create a safe place for children and young people to escape stress, enjoy structured activities and benefit from cross-generational as well as peer relationships that allow both verbal and non-verbal communication. Successful programmes will explicitly teach conflict resolution and problem-solving skills, give children contact with caring, flexible adults and involve the children in decisions, building on their own skills and natural resilience.

The preliminary results from a Comic relief review of literature for the research concludes that there is limited evidence to show that sport per se can lead to many of the benefits associated with it. It demonstrates, however, that sport has qualities that can make it a valuable tool in development. Its popularity makes it an effective way to ‘hook’ people into broader programmes, but more importantly, it can engage them longer-term by creating a safe place in which relationships of trust can develop in a non-threatening environment. Sports brings opportunities to mix across generations, build relationships through both verbal and non-verbal communication, bring structure and enable children to experience some of the physical and psychological health benefits associated with physical exercise.