Naandi, and the 170,000 Nanhi Kalis we support each year, are very serious about sports. So serious, in fact, that we have a sports app – one we’re sure is the first of its kind in India, perhaps even the world. The story of how this app came to be is a beautiful, inspiring one, and we’d like to share it with you.
Early into the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, life in Indian cities came to a complete halt, leaving Naandi team members adjusting to a new reality of being confined to their homes. For the Nanhi Kalis and their Skills Associates (SAs) living in smaller villages across India, however, life remained largely unchanged. The Sports for Life programme had already been running for a few months, and SAs were still able to meet their assigned groups of Nanhi Kalis to lead sports sessions as they normally would.
To keep the Sports for Life momentum without the ‘in-person’ training aspect, our Core Sports Team had to get creative. They began digitising Sports for Life training content – embedding videos, images, and instructions into PDFs to share with SAs as weekly sports lessons and personal development guides. Like a vibrant feedback loop, the SAs, directly linked to each other and the Core team via WhatsApp groups, began sharing content back. Videos and pictures poured in of them and the girls carrying out exercises, accompanied by comments, questions, and feedback. “The girls love the skipping rope exercise!” “Is this the correct way to set up the sprinting track?” “We love being this active!” In awe of this digital highway of content – the information relays spurred by SAs for their learning and enjoyment, and that of the girls – we began to think: This works! Can we gamify this? Can this become an app?
As fate would have it, a funding opportunity to ‘bridge the digital gender divide’ arose almost in unison with the idea. What divide, you may ask? Well, according to NFHS-5 and GSMA studies, 91% of Indian men have access to a smartphone, compared to only 54% of women. Of those women, only 33% have ever used the internet. In rural areas, the gap is even wider, as traditional gender roles, combined with unpaid domestic work and other societal factors, frequently leave women who do have smartphones with little time or opportunity to truly benefit from their connectivity for health, learning, or movement.
Aware of this divide, and having already witnessed themselves beginning to breach it, Naandi was determined to win the funding and transform the Sports for Life curriculum into an app. A testament to our Core Sports Team’s resolve, the funding came through! After many app iterations with a dedicated tech team (whose leader, a sports enthusiast himself, was determined to ensure it met our requirements), SportStar was launched in 2021 as a girl-centered, women-driven wonder-web-world – a digital platform designed to promote sports participation and physical literacy among underprivileged women and girls across India.
We like to describe SportStar as a world-class sports educational app and a social media platform rolled into one: a vibrant digital space where girls and women can safely connect as an online community to access resources similar to those made available to high-level athletes. Every emoji, image, video, and discussion thread on SportStar is made by our community, and safeguarded by and for our community. Nanhi Kalis and SAs using and benefiting from the app learn from videos and pictures of Our Core Sports trainers who look like them, playing soccer, dancing, doing yoga, demonstrating technical sports movements, skipping, stretching, and more. The content is relatable and, therefore, inspiring…“If they can do it, so can I!”
With a sense of connection to and support from a larger group, especially when starting a new (maybe daunting) activity, it becomes easier to subvert internalized societal and digital norms that often discourage girls and women from being active and seeking out content to learn from online. This sense of connection is also crucial for girls and women to feel safe to discuss mental health and menstruation, which are personal development aspects of the curricula. Being part of a sports community is what teaches that sports is more than just physical exercise: it is about having fun, becoming stronger and more confident, developing leadership skills, and gaining invaluable teamwork experience.
Currently, SportStar is bringing two exciting curricula to life for our Nanhi Kalis, each of whom receives two Nanhi Kali sports T-shirts, two pairs of socks, and a pair of sports shoes in their Kit Bag. The first curriculum, Monsoon Magic, is a four-week course that began in late June and is wrapping up at the end of this month. Every Sunday night, SAs log in to SportStar to review the seven components posted for the upcoming week’s sports sessions. These components include: a warm-up, two team play segments, an individual skill, a cool-down, and a sports diary reflection. The seventh component is the overarching theme for the week, and for Monsoon Magic, these themes are the graceful and beneficial practices of dance and yoga, perfect for movement and strength to be enjoyed indoors or out.
Here’s an example of how a ‘Monsoon Magic’ sports session would roll out. Prepped by SportStar, the SA will begin her session with a Zumba dance fitness warm-up, easing her Nanhi Kali group into movement after a long day of learning at school. What follows is a high-energy game of ‘Move and Freeze’ for the team play component. Then, the SA guides the individual skill: a Surya Namaskar sequence, where each Nanhi Kali practices at her own pace, following her body’s cues and her own breath to focus on personal growth rather than group performance. After another group game of dance tag, the session concludes with a cool-down of seated stretches integral to yoga and essential for easing the muscles and body after a period of exertion. To wrap up the session, the SA presents a personal development question for the Nanhi Kalis to reflect on and record in their journals, with the opportunity to share their entries in the next sports session.
Looking ahead, the next program running from August onwards is Toofaan Tips, a dynamic 12-week curriculum with weekly modules and components focused on building physical and mental skills that make up the fundamentals of athletics. Athletics, if you didn’t know, is a huge part of Naandi’s Sports for Life curriculum, culminating in the Nanhi Kalis’ annual Toofaan Games event.
SportStar is one of Naandi’s favourite innovations, as its curriculum is continuously shaped by the changing needs and voices of our diverse community of girls and women. Through its interface, which is truly a wonder-web-world of sports, we know we can pave a path for India towards an inclusive, impactful sports world.
