Starting from 2016 many educated minds from all around the country started to volunteer. In the same year we started many projects to help these kids. One of these was the project Edu-Kick. Through this project we laid emphasis on promoting primary education to children from the underprivileged sections of the society. We taught subjects like English and mathematics. They’re also made to learn other skills like problem solving, creativity, communication and confidence by the use of specially developed football games.

One of these projects we did in Kamptee, which is near Nagpur. We did this project in a school. The school had a dirty ravine behind it and in front of it the ground was used for weddings and the trash would be thrown all around the place. Our project sought to change things around this school. We helped the school authorities with this and also ran a project similar to Edu-Kick. In only three months the schools classrooms were full with children ready to learn and the headmaster praised us for our work there. The school authorities never thought that we’d be able to do such an amazing job developing the area, the ground which was full of litter every time began to be maintained by the children and even the parent. The education that was imparted by our volunteers also helped the children a lot.

In 2016, Slum Soccer was awarded the inaugural FIFA Diversity Award, we were recognised by FIFA for our work in promoting diversity and anti-discrimination in and through football. We were also given generous donation by FIFA which we used to start the making of an Astroturf pitch in Nagpur. This pitch was really necessary for the kids as they now went for the Homeless World Cup they needed to train on a proper pitch. It’s been named the Diversity Pitch. When the construction started my son said that we don’t have enough funds to complete this project but I told him that we’ve gone through worse conditions, when we started Slum Soccer, many people opposed us but we’re still here, in the same way this pitch will also be built.