Royal Patron: HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh GCVO
Ashfold School gearing up for the OSCAR UK Tour 2023

Right now my school is working hard to prepare for a sports tour later this year. As is always the case with these things, it takes an awful lot of planning and organizing, plus some significant fund raising. But this tour is going to be very different, because for us at Ashfold, none of us are going anywhere! In fact, we are planning and fund raising so that 16 children from Mumbai can come on a football tour to the UK. And whilst it seems like a lot of work, I know that it will all be worth it because I have done this before. 

For me, it all started with a conversation in 2016 at my previous school with former parent Lucinda Sowerbutts. She had met Ashok Rathod and heard about the amazing work that he was doing in the slums of Mumbai with his charity, the OSCAR Foundation, using football to give young people the educational opportunities in life that they needed and deserved. Lucinda was wondering if there was any possibility that she could organise a UK tour for a team from Mumbai and whether we would be able to help. It seemed to me, as a teacher and a football fan, that this was an amazing idea and that there was no doubt that in a school like ours we had the resources and the network to help.

And so it began. Ashok and Lucinda were unstoppable in their drive and desire to make the tour happen and the germ of an idea very quickly became a reality, with a date set for October 2017. At Beaudesert, as one of the host schools, we needed to prepare to play our part. 

In schools we spend quite a lot of time raising money for lots of charities but it had always frustrated me that we had a bit of a scattergun approach: a cake sale for Charity A one week, followed by home clothes day for Charity B the next, and so on and so on. For the children, there was rarely the chance to genuinely engage with one charity and so this tour was a fantastic opportunity for them to do just that. Ashok and the OSCAR team sent us updates from Mumbai to give us a sense of what they were doing and Ashok also came to the UK to speak to us in assembly. Suddenly, we had a real connection with real people and the whole thing came alive.

I knew that we needed to engage the whole school community with our fundraising, so we came up with the idea of the Big Beaudesert Dribble, challenging ourselves to dribble the distance from our school to Mumbai, 4543 miles, in the space of ten days. This meant that everyone played their part in the fundraising, including staff and parents. It was quite an effort, but we managed to get the miles done just in time and with other events as well we managed to raise nearly £20,000, which supported the tour and helped with the work back in Mumbai.

With the Dribble taking place in May, the excitement had reached fever pitch by the time the boys from Mumbai arrived in late September. It was certainly an amazing moment when they first arrived. I’d like to say that they took it all in their stride, but the OSCAR boys just couldn’t contain their excitement, delight and gratitude with everything that they experienced, both on and off the pitch. Looking back now the visit itself is a bit of a blur: the boys presented to us in assembly, giving us an insight into their lives at home; they joined us for lessons, breaktimes and mealtimes for school day; and then we had the fixture itself, with the whole school watching, not sure who to be supporting. 

Those who were there will certainly never forget the experience. Those who took part in the whole occasion, from the fundraising beforehand, to the hosting of the boys, to the match itself (a 2-1 win to OSCAR!), will never forget the difference that football and friendship made to that group of players. And we won’t forget the power that we have to make a difference, a genuine and long-lasting difference, to others. 

OSCAR boys gather for the UK Tour trials in 2017

So as I start to prepare my new school, Ashfold, for a visit from another OSCAR touring team, in amongst all of the unknowns and uncertainties of the weeks and months ahead, there is one thing that I know to be true. It will be a life-changing experience for all of us, not just for the boys and girls from Mumbai. We will be inspired by them; we will be delighted by them; and, I know, we will challenged by them to look not just beyond our horizons here at our school, but also to look within ourselves to unlock the potential that we have to make a difference. 

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Founder of OSCAR, Ashok Rathod at Ashfold School in May 2023

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