Tag: Saumil Majmudar

News

‘Play’ is key to early childhood care and education

Jun 25, 2024 by Sujata Muguda 0 Comments #Early childhood care and education, #ECCE, #India’s leading youth sports organization, #National curriculum framework, #Saumil Majmudar, #Sportz Village

By- Saumil Majmudar, Founder, CEO and MD, Sportz Village – India’s leading youth sports organization, Columnist and Author of the book ‘Get Kids To Play’

The new National curriculum framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) launched by The Ministry of Women and Child Development is a major, positive step towards foundational development of children. According to research in neuroscience, 90% of a child’s brain is developed by the age of 6. It is indeed heartening to see the importance of foundational development among children between 3 to 6 being given its due with the new ECCE framework.

The new ECCE framework involves parents, teachers, and community as key contributors or stakeholders to the foundational development of a child. It is designed to enable Anganwadi workers, caregivers, and teachers to fill-in the gaps with respect to nutrition and stimulation among children. With more than 8 crore children below the age of six under Anganwadi care, the framework will involve capacity building of Anganwadi workers. The MOST interesting part is the focus on inculcating physical, motor, cognitive and socio-emotional skills in children by the age 6, where ‘play’, both structured and unstructured, as well as physical education have an important role to play.

Structured physical education will be one of the important enablers to implementing ECCE framework among children between age 3 to 6. Section III of the ECCE framework also talks about combining both indoor and outdoor activities for holistic development of children. There is ample research evidence to support that physical education not just makes a child physically fit and active, it also fosters ethical as well as social-emotional traits, improves academic performance, and stimulates the child holistically.

Therefore, adoption of structured physical education program as part of the curriculum in schools and Anganwadi care centres at scale will lay a strong foundation for holistic development in children, all while retaining the fun element intact in their learning process. While excessive screen time in age group of 2 to7 has already started showing adverse impact, regular physical activity also has a key role to play in combating physical and psychological health issues from an early age.

ECCE framework launched by the Government has promptly reinforced the importance of structured foundational development for children; it is action time for education sector leaders, parents and other key stakeholders to implement it at scale towards a holistically Viksit Bharat.

gaming, News

Sportz Village’s Active Club Ensures that Children can Play Anytime Anywhere and Remain Fit During the Pandemic

Jul 5, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Co-founder and Group CEO, #Saumil Majmudar, #Sportz Village

Active ClubMumbai – Sportz Village, World’s No. 1 youth sports organization on a mission to get 100 million kids to play, ensures that children remain active and fit during the pandemic, through Active Club- A special virtual program targeted at children between the ages of 4 to 19 years. Close to 40,000 children have used the Active Club platform to get active and healthy.

Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as with continuous lockdowns, children are spending more time at home as schools remain shut. Covid or No Covid, physical activity and play are imperative for a child’s holistic development. Therefore, there is a requirement to make home a child’s new playground.

With the ongoing covid crisis in the country, Sportz Village was quick to adapt to the digital world and come up with a virtual program called Active Club for children between the ages of 4 to 19 years in 2020.

Benefits of Active Club Program:
• Better Physical Health
• Better Mental Health
• Opportunity to Interact with Peers

The program intends to include sports and fitness as a part of a child’s daily routine. The program not only ensures that children get to play and have fun but also lays a foundation towards their sports journey. The instructor-led program revolves around getting children and parents to subscribe to different online training modules wherein certified trainers would train the children on various age-appropriate, sports-specific fitness activities. Moreover, since the child would be performing the physical activities at a particular distance from the screen, the probability of straining one’s eyes is reduced.

Customized activities around martial arts, yoga and general fitness were well-received by children with Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune being the most active cities.

Speaking about the Active Club program, Saumil Majmudar, Co-founder and Group CEO, Sportz Village said, “With an aim to revolutionize the way fitness and sports can be implemented in a child’s routine, we were quick to adapt to the new normal and conceptualize the idea of Active Club. We had an overwhelming response in the past year and hope to reach more children through our program. Holistic development of children has been the prime focus for Sportz Village and though Active Club we have tried to ensure that children stay active, healthy, and happy during these difficult times.”

Business World

Sportz Village Xp steadily unlocks sports for consumer engagement

Oct 30, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Jitendra Joshi, #PAN India, #Saumil Majmudar, #Sports, #Sportz Village Xp

Sports are a major contributor to economic and social development. The onset of Covid-19 pandemic, as we know, has led to lockdowns of businesses, schools, public spaces etc., further leading to disruption of many regular aspects of life, including sports and physical activity. Consequently, brands that believed in experiential sports as a medium to connect with consumers were left with no option to engage consumers physically. Sportz Village Xp, the pioneer of Experiential Sports Marketing that specializes in school contact programs designed to meet brand’s consumer connect goals, configured new ways to engage kids through ‘Phygital’ means.

Saumil Majmudar, Co-Founder, CEO and Managing Director of Sportz Village says, “There is a pent-up need in consumers for playing after all the restrictions recently. And so, with all the appropriate safety protocols being followed, sports programs will see a restart as consumers focus on health and immunity through physical activity/play/sports. These programs will be a combination of Digital and Physical – Phygital – hence providing the right balance of safety and scale. In the near term, Home will be the New Playground”.

Sportz Village Xp and group company Sportz Village have successfully designed and implemented various Phygital programs to keep kids active during the lockdown, like Home Games, Play At Home as well as Active Club which is a subscription-based online training platform for physical education and sports.

With the Unlock 5.0 taking place and markets gradually opening up, people are cautiously stepping out into the new normal. Saumil continues, “Brands will be eager to re-engage with consumers after the lockdown and they will naturally go towards engagement models that ensure consumers see them in a positive and uplifting context. And experiential sports programs, Digital and Physical, with all the safety norms and standards, provide the deep engagement they need to reconnect with their consumers.”

Sportz Village Xp offers great sports experiences by providing PAN India participation opportunities across multiple sports. Its areas of expertise include Experiential Sports Marketing – helping brands achieve their marketing goals through amateur sports programs; Grassroot Sports Development and School Contact Programs – enabling millions of kids to experience the magic of sports; and Government sports programs – providing execution & network support to large-scale government sports initiatives.

Over the years, this business vertical has been responsible for the execution of well-recognized large-scale events and programs like Mumbai Games – the world’s first-ever city-level, multi-age and multi-sports extravaganza, Premier Badminton League, Reliance Foundation Youth Sports, Coca Cola Cup, Hero Grameen Khel Utsav, Skoda Single Wicket Tournament, Boostcamp, Tata Tea ‘Suraksha’, Star Sports KBD Junior, Milo National Quiz, HCL Foundation ‘Sports for Change’ and the Khelo India Youth Games among many others.

Jitendra Joshi, Co-Founder and Director of Sportz Village says, “Brands like these believe that sport is the most receptive medium for engagement and enables a long-term relation with their consumers, not to forget the recognition they get as a sports enabler brand.”

As an entity, it has partnered with over 100 brands, over 15000 schools & colleges to create unique sports programs, thus driving participation from more than a million kids each year.

Sportz Village Xp, with its well-defined safety protocols for events, learnings from international markets like Dubai, and its investments in Digital experiential sports marketing platforms like Digital Talent Identification and Digital Tournaments can help brands engage with consumers at scale in a cost-effective manner.

Sportz Village Xp is actively driving consumer and employee engagement programs through Phygital play/sports solutions and hoping to deliver active Experiential Sports Programs in the near future with safety SOPs in place.

Business World

Let Children be Children : SportzVillage underlines the importance of physical activity during these trying times

Oct 21, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #physical activity, #Play At Home’, #Saumil Majmudar, #Sportz Village, #Sportz Village Schools

With no end in sight to the school shutdowns, it is even more necessary than before to focus on the overall well-being and health of children. The children are under increasing pressure to outperform their peer’s due to shrinking opportunities and rising competition. The pandemic has worsened this situation even further, as the kids are left with no way to decrease their stress.

The continuous exposure to laptop and phone screens has had a negative impact on their health and it has led to an increase in obesity and laziness levels as well as deformities in their posture. Physical Activity has taken a hit at a time when it is required the most. The lack of exercise has affected the cognitive development and socio-behavioural skills of children. In a bid to set their child apart from others of the same age group, parents are enrolling their kids into more and more online courses which leads to an increase in the screen time along with an increase in mental pressure.

Keeping this in mind, Sportz Village Schools, India’s No. 1 sports education organization, had launched the ‘Play At Home’ program, which is going stronger by the day. The Play At Home program is designed to integrate seamlessly into a school’s online curriculum and help keep kids physically active and stress free.

Saumil Majmudar, Co-founder, CEO and Managing Director of Sportz Village said “It is extremely important to keep our children fit and happy during this trying time. Through the ‘Play At Home’ program, children will not only be fit, active, healthy and happy but also would get an opportunity to do fun activities along with their parents.”

WHO GUILDELINES FOR PHYSICAL FITNESS.

The world health organization stresses the importance of physical fitness and recommends that all kids and adults should take part in some form of physical activity, thereby adjusting the form and duration of the exercise to cater to their needs.

Physical presence in the playgrounds is not possible and people need to find new ways to keep their kids active. The WHO recommends a few methods like online exercise classes as a way to remain physically active even at home. These activities can be sustained during and post the pandemic. They also recommend engaging in stay-at-home physical activities that are not digitally driven.

The ‘Play At Home’ program is designed in a manner that will help the children to be active, healthy and happy while they are at home. The program contains age-appropriate activities and tasks that are helpful to maintain the physical, emotional as well as mental well-being of the children. The program contains online-live physical activity sessions as well as the ‘leaderboard’ platform through which trainers can assign tasks and monitor the activity levels of children.

Sportz Village’s ‘Play At Home’ initiative has also been applauded and supported by many of its partner schools as well.