Institute of Social Research and Development (2020)

India
2020-2021

In brief

The Indian based Institute of Social Research and Development uses the power of football as a vehicle to fight drug addiction of young men; activities include football training, life skills education, family counselling sessions, referral and linkage services and football competitions.

Problem to be tackled

Manipur is one of the north-eastern states of India sharing international border with Myanmar. Drug abuse/addiction is a serious health concern causing severe impact on economy, welfare and development. Manipur witnessed impact of drug use and HIV/AIDS from the early 1990’s and the state is third highest, next to Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu in regard to the total number of HIV positive cases.

People at large hate the drug users, scold and ostracise them from social activities. They try to isolate them from friends and relatives. They are seen as criminals. No one thinks about the real causes of this misbehaviour. Instead of creating a supportive and enabling environment to relieve the addict from misbehaviour, the society rejects, stigmatizes and discriminates them. As a result, many youths are drop out from schools, nexus with anti-social elements and involvement in crimes in the state. There are no specific intervention activities to rehabilitate, reintegrate and mainstream the youths who depend on drugs.

Local partner

The main purpose of the project is to build the capacities of youth who use drugs to enable them to abstain from drugs and to reintegrate into education and society through the medium of sport, namely football, and other enabling environment activities.

By the end of the pilot programme those beneficiaries should act as a role model and reach out to other vulnerable youths.

Beneficiaries

Institute of Social Research and Development works in this project directly with 15 – 24 years old males with a socio-economic background below poverty line a majority of school dropouts.

SOL’s contribution

With the support from The SOL Foundation, Institute of Social Research and Development will be able to run and implement an annual (pilot) programme using football to assist young men to abstain from drugs and to reintegrate into society and education – project title: “Football a medium of reintegration of Youths into Society.”

Project partner

Institute of Social Research and Development targets to provide a better future for the marginalised and vulnerable sections of the society; they aim to empower women, children and youths to enable them to realise their rights through education, social and human rights awareness by collective action.

The main activities base on the issues of their communities and inclusion of communities in programme design, implementation and monitoring activities, e.g. to improve social economic status of Tribal Women, addressing the issue of Mob Justice, vocational training for women or low cost housing for urban homeless.

Institute of Social Research and Development

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