Dr. Abhijeet Barse, CEO of Slum Soccer (Krida Vikas Sanstha) Nagpur, India, responded to the call of his conscience to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the underprivileged and disadvantaged CYP and returned to India from U.S in 2006. Driven by a forward looking vision he strategically transformed the grass-roots football organization to one-of-its-kind “Sports for Development” organization having international reach and recognition.
Under Dr. Barse’s guidance and direction, the Slum Soccer football team debuted in the Homeless World Cup in 2006 representing India. Thereafter, the organization has gained accolades and encomiums on national and international stage including FIFA Diversity Award and World Football Summit 2022 - Football For Good Awards for inclusion and integration of deaf CYP in mainstream.
In his tenure of 16 years, Slum Soccer’s scope and scale has more than quadrupled. Today, the organization has a pan India presence in 24 states as well as metro cities. In addition to Slum Soccer programs addressing SDG issues, it is perhaps the only fully deaf accessible S4D organization in India.
Dr. Barse is an accomplished public speaker and has delivered TEDx talks. He headed an expert’s panel at International Conventions on Football Business and was on the network board of streetfootballworld (Strategic Alliance Partner of FIFA).
An Acumen Fellow (Class of 2014) , he has successfully completed the Executive program for Non-Profit leader at Stanford Business School.
Slum Soccer’s success saga has inspired the recently released film “Jhund” with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead.
The conversation was very interesting where in Parmesh Shahani explains the difference between ‘Gender’ and ‘Sex’, elaborating he explains that gender is the organ that we have and sex is our behavior with it. Parmesh also talks about his journey and coming out of the closet and telling his family the truth about his sexuality expressing that it was not easy but his family gracefully accepted him. In the conversation, Manvendra Singh Gohil who is an Indian Prince also talks about his journey and how he gets calls and messages every day about the people who are facing the same situations as he was facing he also says that there would be a movie made on Parmesh life.