>> School wide football clubs

In order for football to be a success in our Tibetan community in exile, the association feels that it is most necessary to organize the game at the grass root level. To this end it plans to establish football clubs in every Tibetan school and gradually even at the local community level in India, Nepal and Bhutan.

Aims and Objectives
The school wide football club program has three main aim and objectives:
Firstly, the school wide club activities will enable us to take young talented and enthusiastic players and groom them to be future national players for Tibet. Secondly it is aimed at character building through football by which the game’s intrinsic qualities such as sportsmanship, individuality within group constraints, responsibility, punctuality, decision making, teamwork, perseverance and strong work ethics are inculcated to the children right from the beginning. All these qualities and more make a successful team and it is these very attributes that will be needed in our society’s experiment with democracy and civil society. When these qualities are displayed on the field it can influence the thousands of spectators. Few other civil society activities have the ability to attract, influence and seek the participation of such large number of people. Finally the club system would also ensure that we meet the conditions of the World Football Observatory.

Implementation
The Association has already started contacting different Tibetan Schools in India requesting the School authorities to begin and encourage the formation of a football club within their school. Interested students can enroll in the club and a teacher could take the lead in organizing the game and other activities related to football. The association will provide the necessary facilities and the funding support.

The association is thankful to the TCV Head Office for their support in encouraging such clubs in their Schools. There will be 8 major schools from TCV and 4 more Tibetan autonomous schools are expected to join. As such, to start with, there will be around 12 schools for the year 2004.

The Association also plans to hold a Inter club football tournament towards the end of the year. From this tournament, the association hopes to select 30 best players from among the clubs to form the Junior National Team.