Magic Bus Organisation

Lehman Brothers enter a 3 year partnership with Institution project.

May to January 2007

ORGANISATION

Vision Realignment... defining our programme goals & pillars

Vision Realignment (VRA) - defining the programme goals and pillars

Stepping into the second phase of Vision Realignment exercise we set about to define our programme goals, pillars and our interventions.

Magic Bus Goals

Sensitise & Advocate the child’s right to play
Promote gender equality
Promote personal and social development
Bring the community together through sporting opportunities by giving exposure to excellence and fairplay
To become socially sustainable by empowering youth to become peer leaders
Become financially self-sustainable

Our programme revolves around five pillars with mentoring being the central pillar. The mentor ensures a child friendly and child participatory, fun and safe environment for experiential learning.

We are excited to be launching our new website and organisation plan in the next month where you will be able to read more about our work in depth.

Commonwealth Sports Development Conference, Glasgow

The Commonwealth Sports Development Conference was attended by our Founder, Matthew Spacie and Programme Director, Alka Sesha.

An account of our Programme Director's experience:
The conference was a more enriching experience than any I have attended so far, simply because it brought together some of the best practices on sport development on a common platform with the objective of them learning and sharing with one another. The conference was small enough for practitioners and partner organisations to really get to know one another on a common platform.
I would specially like to thank Prof Fred Coalter for his huge efforts in making this happen and Vicki Coalter for hosting a lovely dinner for all the project representatives that they had visited in Africa and India.

Visitors at the Bus

We were delighted to have The Duke of York, His Highness, Prince Andrew, visit our programme and interact with the children.

An energetic group of senior managers from the UK company HALMA, spent an entire day visiting our sessions and playing football with the children.

Peter Kerkar, Managing Director, Cox & Kings, a long time supporter spent a day with his two daughters at the Magic Bus camp at the centre.

The Corporate Volunteer Programme was in full swing this year with volunteers from GE and HSBC participating in football matches with our children.

Curriculum Development

Magic Bus is developing an age-specific and needs-based curriculum for scalability and programme quality. Our team consists of qualified coaches, a curriculum writer and experts in child development.

The Explorer curriculum is in its final stages, while drafts for the various age specific football curricula are being chalked out in order to combine the football skills with the related activities and ensure best practice in the delivery of our programme.

The curriculum development team has defined domains for development for Magic Bus children, which include physical development and growth, motor skills, cognitive, emotional and social development. The team are simultaneously understanding and defining development milestones for each age group that will enable us to prepare modules consisting of developmental skill and messages based on the needs of the children.

Creating a manual for the induction training of new staff is an obvious decision to help us enable scalability and this will be an essential tool in training young people in the skills required and the ethos of Magic Bus enabling the implementation of a non-didactic and child friendly programme.

Lehman Brothers enter a 3 year partnership with Institutions

We were excited to enter a partnership with The Lehman Brothers Foundation to fund the pilot study and curriculum development of our programme in government institutions, which is currently offered to over 240 children each week across 5 institutions in the city. The Lehman Brothers office already have an active volunteer programme with Magic Bus in Mumbai having fun in the Mumbai Marathon for us for two years on the run and we are extremely proud to be working together for the next 3 years with the Foundation.

Independence Day was celebrated in a unique way at Chembur Children's Home. 25 volunteers from Lehman Brothers attended the flag hoisting with the children and later got down dirty to clean the play ground. The children and the volunteers together got rid of the overgrown grass and played a game of handball. The event ended with celebrating Gokul Ashtami with the children breaking the dahi handi.

The senior managment gifted the children handballs and goal posts. The removable goal posts were a special gift for the children, as they quickly finish their duties and start practising their skills regularly! After the goal posts the mentoring team saw a spurt in the attendance.