When the Field Becomes the Classroom: What Sports Taught Me About Social Change

I didn’t enter the social sector thinking sports could be one of the strongest teachers. Like many others, I associated

development work with classrooms, community meetings, long discussions, and carefully designed training modules.

Sports, at best, felt like an add-on-useful, but not central.

That assumption didn’t last very long.

Over the years, through evaluations, field visits, and conversations with practitioners far more rooted than me,

sports quietly but firmly reshaped how I understand change. Not as a metaphor- but as a method.

Friendly group picture after football demonstration by Deaf children with representatives from DKI & Slum Soccer

My first real window: sports beyond theory

My earliest deep engagement with sports in the social sector came through an interview with Akshai Abraham,

which later became a blog. Until then, I had theoretical clarity-sports break hierarchies, build confidence faster, and

bypass resistance that lecture-based interventions often face.

But hearing Akshai articulate how play can normalize equality, especially among children, made something click. On

a football field, gender, language, caste, or academic ability matter far less than instinct, teamwork, and trust. It was

my first real glimpse into how sports compress timelines of change- what might take months of dialogue can emerge

organically in a few games.

However, I got a few opportunities to witness the impact sports can have, in-person. As a Research Associate, I

generated insights from the field through interactions and observations. My conversations with the teenage girls

from Delhi’s semi-urban areas or with deaf children of Nagpur, went far beyond program indicators, they revealed

shifts in confidence, aspirations, mobility, and self-perception that numbers alone could never fully capture.

Football and freedom: watching girls breathe

During an impact evaluation of a football-based empowerment programme for semi-urban minority girls run by CEQUIN, what I observed stayed with me.

There were broadly two kinds of girls in the programme. Some were visibly talented-focused, disciplined, and

committed. Football became their pathway into professional opportunities, as players and later as coaches within

similar organisations.

But the second group mattered just as much. During one of the interviews, a girl broke down while recalling how

hard it had been for her to step out regularly for football practice because of her father’s refusal. These were girls for

whom the biggest achievement wasn’t a career in sports-it was permission. Permission to step out of the house

regularly. Permission to meet peers their age. Permission to run, shout, fall, laugh, and try again.

Many came from conservative Muslim households. Seeing girls who usually wore burkhas or modest clothing step

onto a field in football gear-sometimes in front of an audience-was quietly radical. The football field became a rare

space where they could breathe, both figuratively and literally.

Through sport, they absorbed lessons no classroom could teach as effectively:

team spirit, confidence, leadership, discipline, handling wins and losses, and being seen. Even occasional local

matches-with spectators cheering-shifted how they saw themselves, and how others saw them.

That is empowerment you don’t need to over-explain. You just have to witness it.

When football met deafness: learning how inclusion is built

Another project took me to a completely different intersection-football and deafness-through an endline evaluation

of a programme by Deaf Kidz International in partnership with Slum Soccer.

On paper, it already sounded complex. In practice, it was even more layered.

Slum Soccer was known for taking football into the slums of Maharashtra, building communities of young people

who had fallen into substance abuse or crime, and using sport as a way back into dignity and structure. Their work

had a strong geographic anchor.

Deaf children, however, were not geography-bound. Kids travelled from across Nagpur-often long distances-to reach

the football ground. Initially, this felt like a logistical weakness.

It turned out to be a strength.

Regular travel prepared these children for the mainstream world. Some began navigating the city independently for

the first time. That alone boosted confidence, problem-solving, and self-reliance-outcomes no workshop could have

delivered so naturally.

The bigger challenge lay elsewhere: teaching football itself.

Explaining rules to children is hard enough. Explaining them to deaf children is harder-especially when sports

vocabulary in Indian Sign Language is still limited. Interpreters helped, but only up to a point.

What followed was one of the most thoughtful capacity-building journeys I’ve seen.

 One hearing coach committed to learning Indian Sign Language-for an entire year.

 Two deaf adults were trained in football, with interpreter support.

After a year, something powerful emerged:

a coaching team where one side knew football deeply, and the other knew deafness from lived experience.

Together, they created a learning environment that worked.

The result wasn’t just better football skills. Deaf children showed improved confidence, peer bonding, discipline, and

a strong sense of belonging. More importantly, it demonstrated what real inclusion looks like-not accommodation as

an afterthought, but redesigning systems around people.

Interacting with deaf children learning football (I had intermediate-level of Sign Language skills)

Interacting with deaf children learning football (I had intermediate-level of Sign Language skills)

What sport keeps teaching me

Across contexts-gender, minority communities, disability-sports has consistently shown me three things:

1. It accelerates trust. People participate before they overthink.

2. It teaches without preaching. Values are lived, not explained.

3. It creates dignity through ability, not sympathy.

In a sector where we often struggle to sustain engagement, sports does something quietly radical-it makes people want to show up.

A closing hope

As the social sector continues to search for scalable, meaningful, and humane interventions, my hope is simple: that

we look beyond conventional silos and embrace all forms of sports (not just football), as legitimate, powerful tools

for change.

Because sometimes, the most effective classroom has no walls.

Just a field, and people discovering what they’re capable of-together.

Visited Nidhi’s home - A deaf girl who was a National level Paralympics runner

This perspective is shaped by my work at NIITI Consulting, where field evaluations consistently show how sports-based approaches drive real social change.

The author works with NIITI Consulting, focusing on research and field evaluations in education, gender, and inclusion.