Special Feature: Dream A Dream participating in the Adidas Exchange Program

The long-awaited launch of the adidas Exchange Programme in India took place in November 2010. In three days of workshops, streetfootballworld network members from all over India came together to brush up on the newest football training methods and improve their own skills in organisational development & youth development. Suchetha Bhat – Head, Curriculum Development and Partnerships, Lawrence AL – Program Anchor, Dream Sports Program and Manjunath- Graduate from Dream Sports Program and currently working as Sports Coordinator in Dream Sports Program share the learnings for Dream A Dream from participating in the Adidas Exchange Program.

Suchetha Bhat – Head, Curriculum Development and Partnerships Emergence of Youth Leaders is core to Dream A Dream’s assessment of the impact that our programs have on the children we work with, and we are consciously working on nurturing this among our youth. The exposure at this workshop helped us reflect on the design of our programs to develop leadership capacities in our youth that can be transformative for their life. The workshop was truly an ‘exchange’ program as all of the discussions and solutions were coming mostly from deliberations within the participating organizations. It was great to see how small individual pieces of knowledge and experience that each organization brought helped us to develop a comprehensive strategy around Youth Leadership development. We were each able to articulate and formulate a plan for our next steps to ensure we do not lose out on young leaders and are able to identify, nurture and develop them to their full potential.

Lawrence AL – Program Anchor, Dream Sports Program I had the opportunity to attend the football coaching sessions at Adidas Exchange Program. The workshop was aimed at learning modern coaching methods, thereby making our program more attractive to the children and youth that we work with.  Coach Brad Douglas, Technical Director at Coerver Coaching from Australia gave us personal training on the Coerver Coaching methods and techniques. Coerver Coaching has long been renowned for its innovative football training methods. Some of the highlights was an understanding on issues like age appropriate pressure to be put on a child and using sports to develop creative skills and values like sportsmanship, respect etc. I plan to implement this immediately in the Dream A Dream programs. This can help ensure better results, good growth, and a great future for the children in our programs.