The activities offered through Matthew's program, Magic Bus, allow participants to build individual and team skills through challenge, physical effort, and teamwork.
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Matthew is engaging a range of people and partners– teachers, athletic trainers, actors, professional athletes, environmentalists, and child psychologists– in an organized effort to bring recreational opportunities to children and young people from poor urban homes.
For many such children, organized sports and recreational activities can provide an outlet to express themselves, release pent-up energy, build confidence, and develop a strong sense of teamwork. In the slums and shantytowns of Mumbai and other large cities in India, growing numbers of children and adolescents risk falling into lives of crime, drug addiction, and violence. Recreational activities are often organized on an individual, informal basis– which does not offer the economies of scale that could extend these opportunities to more children.
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These organizations have their hands full identifying children in need and helping them survive as a result, they have limited resources to meet the children's overwhelming demand for play. Responding to the needs of poor children, a large number of citizen-led organizations have emerged to address issues ranging from children's rights to health and education. Also, the corporations themselves have no resources to run programs for so many children. These municipal corporations are territorial about their property for fear that if they relinquish land to an organization, it may be difficult to recover. Municipal corporations have no funds for organized sports and outdoor activities, though they do own and maintain large sports grounds.
Organized recreational sport activities are, for the most part, unavailable to India's poor urban children. While his work to date has been in Mumbai, Matthew expects to introduce his programs in other Indian cities soon. His close work with corporate partners has resulted in the construction of recreation centers and camps near larger cities.
Through all his work Matthew is enabling a shift from thinking about recreational sports as a waste of time to understanding its significance in allowing children to develop skills, confidence, and a sense of community. Matthew is encouraging municipalities to adopt policy that improves urban parks and unused playgrounds. He is also fostering partnerships that both allow coordinated volunteer involvement in the programs and build long-term support from corporate and individual donors. Matthew is introducing his programs– sports training camps, leagues, field trips– through existing citizen-led organizations, including 15 Mumbai-based children's organizations. He is bringing sports to children who live in urban neighborhoods and slums, children who would otherwise have few opportunities for outdoor play and for interacting with peers and adults from outside their closed, often oppressive, sphere.
Matthew sees that recreational sports can teach children teamwork, values, and an appreciation for physical health and for achievement through hard work.
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