| Date 18-Feb-2011 to 19-Feb-2011 |
Location Chennai, Tamil Nadu |
Format Sub National |
Football matches for awareness generation and promotion of youth participation in city governance
To promote purposeful engagement of the youth in our governance structure, it is important we focus on youth–led development and youth mainstreaming. It helps to recognise youth leaders in their communities and develop their capacity and interest in contributing to decisions that affect their lives.
Sports is a medium which gives opportunity to the youth to grow physically, socially as well as emotionally, and a platform to connect them with the city in which they live. With a view to engaging the youth in local government decision-making activities to foster civic participation of the younger generation, PRIA and Nav Manas Kalyan Samiti (NMKS) organized a football match in Biharsharif, Bihar, India on 18 and 19 February 2011 at Nalanda College playground.
Director, Field Publicity, Information and Broadcasting ministry, Government of India is carrying out an awareness programme for rural areas called ‘Sampoorna Gramin Swastha Abhiyan’. For urban areas, they decided to collaborate with PRIA on a city awareness campaign and called for a series of publicity programmes. A football tournament was one of the tools where the department not only supported PRIA but a joint invitation was circulated.
The chief guest on the occasion was the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Biharsharif.
Team A: Junior Bihar Club, Biharsharif
Team B: Nalanda Police team, Nalanda
Team C: A.N. Progressive team, Patna
Team D: Telhara Football Club, Biharsharif.
The tournament ended in a tie between Nalanda Police team, Nalanda and A.N. Progressive team, Patna. The teams received a plaque and a football each.
Over a thousand spectators came to see the tournament. The event received wide media coverage.
The purpose of the event was to bring citizens and local govern
ment officials together on a common platform to exchange their views on their city. Various issues were raised and discussed. The youth demanded that the municipality contribute to the development of sports by ensuring the maintenance of playgrounds, stadia and pools, and by involving a larger number of youth in sports activities, besides supplying the required quality of sports equipment. They asked for competitions of popular sports to be organised at the local and state levels. Hence, it was decided that such a tournament would be an annual event organized by Biharsharif Municipal Corporation under the name ‘Corporation Cup’. The youth also suggested that town planning rules should not merely provide for play fields, sports fields,vayayamshalas (recreation spaces), gyms, etc. in newly developed areas at the planning stage. City plans should protect and maintain existing infrastructure from encroachment. They also expressed their concern over the state of their city’s environment and the delivery of municipal services.