2018-19 proved to be a fantastic year for OSCAR Foundation!

An U-15 boys team from Ambedkar Nagar community went to Spain to participate in the Donosti Cup - a major international youth tournament held in the city of San Sebastian.

Ambedkar Nagar is a low-income community and many of the boys who participated did not even have a passport, and were travelling for the first time in a plane. The experience of participating at an international level tournament has given them a boost of confidence. And when they were back in India, they returned as heroes for their communities. In the later part of the year, five OSCAR Young Leaders got the opportunity to watch the LIVE Russia v/s Spain match at the Luzhniki Stadium at the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018 and represent India at FIFA Foundation’s Festival in Moscow. We had many such highlights throughout the year which I am sure you’ll enjoy reading in the Annual Report 2018-19.

I would attribute OSCAR’s success in the last year to sustainable giving. FIFA Foundation and our long time partner J.M. Baxi & Co., have supported us in a way that has promised not just growth of our programmes, but also that of the organisation. The biggest advantage of sustainable giving is that it allows the organisation to deliver better results. To give an example, when J.M. Baxi started supporting us, we were only reaching out to 600 children, but within a span of four years, we have crossed 3400 children. Thanks to their support, we could organise professional training and workshops for our staff. The biggest plus of sustainable giving is that impact is visible, and corporate derive more value out of their CSR objectives.

We often get requests to open OSCAR centres in states other than where we are operational. At present, we are only operational in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi, Karnataka, and Vizag. I strongly feel that if we have more partners who believe in sustainable giving, we can develop a ‘Mobile Outreach Team’ that can implement programmes in other states too. Such a project is also expandable to projects specific to Sustainable Development Goals such as education, gender equality, and youth development programmes.