Originally reported and written in February 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content.

Growing up in a slum area in Ambedkar Nagar, Mumbai, Ashok Rathod saw many of his friends drop out of school to work in the nearby Sassoon Docks. His own father, however, threatened to evict him from the family home if he joined them, he recalls. 

So around 2006, while attending college and coaching football at the NGO Magic Bus, Ashok wanted to offer guidance to some of the children in his neighbourhood. He knew a few children who had dropped out, and wanted to convince them to go back. 

Rather than lecturing them, however, he wanted to “bring them together”, he says. He chanced upon the idea of using sport as a hook. 

So he decided to coach them in football. He arranged to meet around 18 boys at Oval Maidan at 4.30 pm one Saturday. He wasn’t confident they would all show up, but they did. The boys had a good time and they agreed to do it again the following week.

Initially, some of the children refused to play with others because of caste, religion, or regional differences. Ashok decided to group those children into the same team and instituted a rule that when a player scores, the whole team has to celebrate, or the goal would not count. 

“In one year, they forgot about caste, religion, etc,” the 34-year-old says. “I also noticed a change in them. They stopped using bad language and had more discipline.”

He also insisted that if they wanted to keep playing football, they had to go to school. Some of them had dropped out, so he enrolled them in a local NGO to improve their reading and writing. 

‘Magnificent, aspirational’

Over time, the original group of boys began to bring their friends along. “They thought if we can change, their other friends can also change,” Ashok says. 

It was hard for him to manage the growing numbers financially, but in 2008 CNN-IBN gave him the Real Hero Award, which came with a cash prize of Rs 3.45 lakh. Ashok used that money to buy new equipment and uniforms, and also rented a community centre in Ambedkar Nagar for the kids, which remained open 24 hours. The centre is still operational today. 

By 2010, the programme had 300 children. “I was trying to support everyone, but then the money got over,” he recalls. 

When Ashok approached people for funds, he was asked if he had a bank account and was a registered NGO. “I said, ‘I don’t want to register. I just want to do it.’ But people wanted their tax deduction.”

He realised it would be difficult to support the children without registering the NGO, so in 2010, the Oscar Foundation was formally instituted. 

The name was inspired by the Academy Awards, with the idea being that the Oscar is something “magnificent and aspirational”. The name stands for ‘Organisation for Social Change, Awareness and Responsibility’.

However, this didn’t immediately solve Ashok’s funding woes. When he would approach a corporation, they would always ask if he had any existing corporate support. When he said no, they would demur too. “[Getting] the first one was very........

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