Sports ministry to promote football through school kids

The sports ministry will be taking initiative to popularise football amongst the school kids by encouraging and motivating them to play the game.

A program, Mission 11 Million has been designed for the initiative and will be seeing the involvement of more than 1 crore school children in football-related activities in about 30 cities across the country. This would not only strengthen the grass-root level, but also help football find its lost footing.

An  All-India Inter School Championship might also happen early next year. School kids will be encouraged to participate in the tournament and popularise football for the 2017 World Cup.

The ministry knows that the programme would require massive funding and so, the government is expected to contribute around Rs 120 crore for the World Cup, and the Mission 11 Million programme would be funded out of this budget. FIFA would be providing around $6 million for the tournament while another $7 million has to be coughed up by the AIFF with the help of the government, a major chunk of which will be spent on infrastructure creation and stadium renovation.

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The ministry has already held several rounds of discussions with FIFA, AIFF, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS), Central Board of Secondary Educations (CBSE), Subroto Mukherjee Sports Education Society, School Games Federation of India (SGFI) and U-17 World Cup Organising Committee to work out the formal launch of programme in October 2016.

An 18-member Implementation Committee, under the chairmanship of sports minister Jitendra Singh, has been created to ensure smooth implementation of the programme.