Moment of Joy

Moment of Joy is a student-led initiative that has supported the training and funding of a sports program at a local school for the past four years now. Through this initiative, we strive to facilitate the development of sports amongst the children of the Shastri Nagar BMC school, Dharavi. Throughout last year, we organised tri-weekly training sessions in Judo, providing the necessary equipment and guidance for the children to excel in local and state-wide tournaments. We attempted to reach out to potential sponsors, and thus cooperated with the heads of school to come up with a presentation to help us convey the spirit of Moment of Joy. The teachers and coaches in charge of the Judo session, proudly informed us that most of the children had participated and won many inter-school and state-level competitions. The Moment of Joy teams have always been aware of the fact that sport includes more than just physical activities. With this mindset, we have continued the Coach-to-coach series to approach the training process more holistically. Accompanied by several coaches, two members of our team and two national-level squash players from our school spoke to the kids and their parents about the struggles of simultaneously handling, both sports training and academics. The talk was helpful for both parents and children, increasing their understanding of the importance that sports hold in their daily life. We also arranged a session with the kids, discussing the importance of a balanced diet in accelerating their development in any sport. The Moment of Joy team also organised the sports day for the Kherwadi Municipal School, run by the NGO Aseema. We helped the representatives of the school coordinate the races, as well as the numerous sports demonstrations. MOJ has been a dream come true.