this story originally appeared in on sep 6 2017bengaluru housed in the clustered settlements of yellapur forest in rural karnataka ravikiran siddi like other sixteenyearolds in his tribe helped his parents in their farm while frequenting the nearest government school four months ago siddi was picked up for his fast legs and put through a training regime for track events after training him for a couple of months he started showing great resultshe has won gold at the taluk level and has qualified for the district meet next week said nitish m chiniwar founder of nonprofit bridges of sports bengalurubased bridges of sports a nonprofit startup founded by nitish m chiniwar provides children from economically and socially backward communities a platform to have a career in sports after researching for 18 months we found that most of the promising athletes drop out at the school level for reasons we city dwellers cant fathom chiniwar said adding many kids dont go for districtlevel competition because they cant afford rs 300 for bus travel the problem lies in the lack of support for athletes at the grassroots the programme aimed at empowering athletes from underserved communities has gained significant success in the last 10 months with their athletes winning gold medals at the district and taluklevel competitions the startup also provides training for visually impaired children in blind football the startup recruits local athletes as coaches and provides them with sports gear and institutional support for training by recruiting local talent and empowering them we put a person on the field who has a thorough idea about his locality in the long run our fellows can become micro entrepreneurs band set up their own academy we have about 15 fellows at the grassroots level who are put through a 24week curriculum and are provided with the equipment for the kids to be trained chiniwar said adding currently we are training about 300 kids which will move up to 600 by october 2 the startup which piloted in chikmagalur district has now expanded to mundgod since its inception about a year ago the programme has trained close to 160 kids just in the siddi ethnic group in rural karnataka nestled in the forests of mundgod about 400 kms from the heart of bengaluru siddis are an ethnic group who descended from the bantu tribe in africa a community of about 30 kids between the age of eight and sixteen have been trained in the last three months they have produced about six gold medals at the taluk level bridges of sports is looking at ways to encourage crowd funding for their initiative retail funding is quite rare to come by in india chiniwar said while most indian ngos run on grants from philanthropic foundations international ngos raise close to 70 of their runway through the crowdfunding model he added the nonprofit startup is supported by nudge foundation backed by infosys co founder nandan nilekani and tata trusts it is currently incubated at iim