Volunteer in India and share your love of sports on a football coaching project in New Delhi. Volunteers work with a youth football development organisation that aims to increase the number of children playing football in Delhi. This is a great opportunity to spend a gap year in India and experience the excitement of living in India’s colourful capital city while making a difference to the lives of children from poor backgrounds.

Gap year volunteer role: This project coaches around 150 boys, aged between 8 and 16 years old. Football helps local children not only by giving them something fun to do, but by teaching them the value of fair play, teamwork, respect, discipline and leadership.

The organisation has only recently found a permanent practice ground, and is now seeking football coaching volunteers to help bring new ideas and training techniques to help the children develop further. Training takes place in afternoons with league matches on Sundays and gap year volunteers will be expected to help design coaching plans, run training sessions and referee matches.

Between training sessions and matches volunteers can help out with sport and other activities at local organisations and schools, or, if you have the right skills, you can help the football coaching project with administration, marketing and IT in its office. This can include promoting the sports project through competitions and newsletters, recording attendances and match results, marketing the programme in schools, managing budgets and organising fundraising activities.

Your gap year experience: This project is a fantastic opportunity to combine your passion for football with gap year travel! Sports volunteering is a great way of engaging with disadvantaged children and teaching them skills that can be used both on and off the sports field. While this project mainly works with boys, it has run girls teams in the past. As a volunteer in India you could help revive this and open up sports to many more children.

Volunteers must have experience of playing or coaching football to a decent standard and will be expected to bring new ideas to training, while acting as a role model for the children. Gap year volunteers helping out in the NGO’s office should have administrative, organisational and IT skills and be proactive in their role.